coding

For the love of Arduino -Getting Started

/ gravescolleen / 3 Comments

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My History with Arduino

I’m not sure of the way most people learn the complicated process of programming Arduino projects because I only know my own convoluted journey. I started the hard way following projects from the Arduino Starter Kit by building photo sensor theremins and electronic magic 8 balls. Here is one of my first Arduino projects I created at a class at the Denton Public Library. (The tweet below is a flashback to the Coding Bonanza I led at Lamar Library in 2014.)

I quickly found that I wanted to do things OTHER than what the projects outlined, but I just didn’t have the code knowledge to hack projects and make them my own. I continued following projects and attempting to tinker with code. For someone with absolutely no background in coding, it was quite an arduous journey. Imagine my surprise when I found out about the ScratchX extension from Kreg Hanning at SXSWedu in 2015!

ScratchX

What a great place to start tinkering with Arduino! I love the work that Ryan Jenkins and The Tinkering Studio are now doing with paper circuits and ScratchX! I see this as a great place to start kids experimenting with Arduino kits (even though one of my favorite things is hooking up wires.) I’m hoping to put my own library Arduino kits on blocks and make first time users more comfortable playing with Arduino and physical computing.

But how can I get students learning the complicated language of Arduino without handing them a large Arduino Cookbook ?

Starter Arduino Kits (Arduino at Heart)

Hummingbird Robotic Kits and the littleBits Arduino module are great places to start. (I have my own littlebits Arduino project featuring Ardublock in our #bigmakerbook and another free littleBits project here. ) These two kits require minimal electronics knowledge, and can be combined with cardboard, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners to make amazing contraptions.

One can also begin to tinker with Arduino coding with any of these kits:

Tinkering with Arduino Lesson Plan

Plus, I’ve developed a lesson plan with the Sparkfun Tinkering Kit that revolves around tinkering with scribblebots and Arduino programming. It’s available at Teachers Pay Teachers.

I wrote it as a challenge to myself because I don’t normally see Arduino as a tinkerable process. It takes quite a lot of knowledge and expertise before one can start to tinker with Arduino coding. That’s why I thought it would be great to develop a lesson around tinkering with Arduino code to actually learn how to write your own code.  Check out the lesson here.

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Learning Scratch in HS 101 – #bigmakerbook

/ gravescolleen / 1 Comment

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Getting to Know Scratch

Today I started the process of teaching all of the freshmen at Ryan High School how to program games in Scratch using project 19 from our Big Book of Makerspace Projects.

I designed this project to be a hybrid between Pong and a chasing game.  I was hoping that my instructions would teach kids how to make games, but also allow for a lot of personalization. AND IT DID!  Instead of giving the explicit instructions from the book, I created “exploration” sheets based on the book so that students could explore Scratch to learn how to create games. I made them as Googledocs, but also offered the option of paper for the students who preferred it. (And surprisingly a lot of them preferred paper!)

Student Personalization

I was so happy today that as soon as students started making games, they immediately came up with their own ideas of how they wanted each game to function.

  • “Can I make the ball bounce off a paddle like pong?
  • “How can I make a ghost that springs back and forth on the screen.”
  • “I’d like to make a game where two players try to catch a basketball and then shoot hoops and score.”
  • “Could I make apples fall from a tree to hit my sprite?”
  • “I want to make four sprites like Scooby Doo characters that once one is out of the game the next one will play. How do I do that?”
  • “Instead of dodgeball, can I make my character kick a soccer ball into a goal?”
  • “Can my sprite fly?”
  • “How can I program two players? Use the WASD keys?”

More to Come!

I loved all the hacking and personalization. Last year, I attempted a similar game instruction and it did not go as clearly as this one.  I found that when students collaborated this year, they had more profound ideas on what to include in their Scratch games. However, if students worked alone, they were able to get further along in their programming.

I also had many native Spanish speakers that found the translation button in Scratch! It was so helpful for me, because I was able to teach these second language students how to program and I learned more Spanish to boot.

I have three more days of teaching Scratch before getting all of the freshmen at Ryan into the library for this coding practice. I can’t wait to see what they all create!