Since designing their algorithms and user interface for their maths quizzes (see last post), students in the Middle & Senior Learning Communities have created their multiple choice maths quizzes in the Tynker coding app.

Shape Quizzes

The Middle Learning Community students designed & created a multiple choice Shape Quiz, where they used their knowledge of regular polygons and created code that used repetition and branching coding concepts.

• REPEAT code blocks were used to draw the shapes, by creating code for one side of the shape and then getting the program to repeat it a certain number of times.  The students had previously created algorithms to help them work out the angle to turn at each corner of the shape.
• Branching was coded by using IF-THEN-ELSE code blocks to perform different actions depending on whether the answer to a question was correct or incorrect.

Here are a couple of examples :

Amber – Year 4

Daniel – Year 5

Times Tables Quizzes

The Senior Learning Community students designed & created a multiple choice Times Tables Quiz.  They coded 10 questions and kept a score on the screen.  Some students were creative in the way they kept score and one student also kept a timer so the user would know how long it took them to do the quiz.

Here are a couple of examples :

Jayden – Year 6

Tomas – Year 6

Liam – Year 6

Have a go at Liam’s quiz and see if you can create a bit of peace and quiet by getting the answers correct so that the chirpy birds disappear.

 

In our Middle and Senior Learning Community Coding Classes students have been learning about algorithms.

Algorithms are detailed step by step instruction sets or formulas for solving a problem or completing a task.  Computer programmers write detailed algorithms to instruct computers and robots how to perform tasks.

The Middle Learning Community practiced designing and writing algorithms for the Pro-Bot robots to draw shapes.  This involved recording some data for each shape, such as the number of sides, the length of the sides and the angle to turn at each corner.  Students observed that algorithms can be written sequentially (the long way) or by using repetition (loops).  They noticed that by using Pro-Bot’s repeat button, the number of buttons that need to be pressed to get Pro-Bot to draw shapes can be reduced dramatically.  Students also used the Tynker coding app to program characters to draw shapes on their iPad screen, as they begin to put together a Tynker Shapes Quiz for other students to use.

The Senior Learning Community students have started designing & coding a Times Tables quiz.  They are choosing 10 times tables questions and presenting each one on the screen as a multiple choice question, where one answer is correct and the other 3 are incorrect.  (They are carefully choosing 3 incorrect answers that could easily be mistaken as the correct answer if the user doesn’t read the question properly).  They have been learning about user interface – what makes a good looking, easy to use and engaging program.  They have been experiencing the importance of good planning & design and have planned out their screen background, characters & questions on paper.  They have designed algorithms using flowcharts that involve decisions and branching for some of their times tables questions.  Planning & design are very important parts of the process of creating software and apps and students have been practicing these skills before embarking on any coding.

Stay tuned to see the quizzes that the Middle & Senior Learning Community students design and create with the Tynker Coding app.

In last week’s Coding lesson, students learned how computers store and send digital images and how they are able to represent images in a digital format.  It’s all about pixels, pixels …. and more pixels.  Students began by taking a pack of black & white squares (pixels) and creating a picture or pattern on a 6×6 grid.  They were then asked to think of ways to instruct someone else to recreate their picture, without showing them the picture.  They experimented with long verbal instructions, short verbal instructions, words (ie black & white) and letters (ie B & W).  In the end, they realised that the quickest and most efficient way, especially for digital computers, was just to say 0 (for white) or 1 (for black).

In small groups, students then created an 8×8 pixel design on paper.  Another student in the group wrote the binary code (the 0s and 1s) representing the picture.  After folding back the first picture so that it was not visible, a 3rd student decoded the binary code to recreate the picture.  Students then reflected on the accuracy of their binary code & the resulting picture.

Last week, our Year 4, 5 and 6 classes again participated in the Hour of Code.

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries.  The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify “code”, to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts.

Our students watched a short video, where computer science professionals such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg told students how their first experience with computer coding was to code something very simple, such as a tic-tac-toe game or a simple shape drawn on the screen.  Our students then chose from many self-paced coding tutorials with themes such as Moana (Disney), Frozen, Minecraft and Star Wars.  Some students used the Tynker coding app to create a simulation of the solar system.

Students learnt about commands such as move forward, turn left, turn right, repeat, repeat until, if-then-else and so on.  Using drag and drop commands blocks and their mathematics knowledge, they were able to programme the characters in the activities to draw interesting shapes and patterns or work through mazes and puzzles, dodging obstacles along the way.  They learnt that the ordering of commands is very important and that commands such as repeat can save 100’s of lines of code and make the coding task a lot quicker.

Some students took the extra challenge to learn text programming, using computer programming languages called Python and Java.  This gave these students a taste of life as a computer programmer.

The Hour of Code activities can be found on this website – https://code.org/learn

Digital Technologies Curriculum

The Digital Technologies curriculum requires that

By the end of Year 4, students will have had opportunities to create a range of digital solutions, such as interactive adventures that involve user choice, modelling simplified real world systems and simple guessing games.

Their solutions are implemented using appropriate software including visual programming languages that use graphical elements rather than text instructions.

Tynker

Our Year 4 students have just completed a unit of work where they created interactive quizzes using Tynker – a visual coding app for kids.  Their quiz was based on facts about a natural resource that they had researched for their Unit of Inquiry on Sharing the Planet.

Plans & algorithms

Students were asked to plan their quiz before they started coding in Tynker.  They could do this in writing, with diagrams or whatever method they thought best.  Here is Stacey’s plan .

Coding

The students spent a few weeks exploring the Tynker coding blocks before commencing the creation of their quiz.  Here are a few snippets of code from the student’s quizzes which demonstrate user input (ask), branching (if-then-else), movement (go to), sound and visual effects.

 

 

Tynker Website

The Tynker Website – https://www.tynker.com – offers teachers a platform to create and manage classes, assign lessons and courses and review and showcase student’s projects.  It also allows students and teachers to open their projects in a browser and access some extra features of Tynker, including the uploading of extra backgrounds.  This was extremely useful for us as we needed maps of Australia as the background for the student’s projects.

Student Reflections

I learnt how to send a message to other characters, how to make the characters talk, how to make questions for people to answer.   Amelia

It is interesting how the code blocks worked because all of them were a lot different to another.  It helped me that the code blocks were different colours for one theme and different colours for another.  Maya

I learnt that when you look at a Tynker project you think it is easy but if you look at all the code it takes a bit of time.  Lucy

I am proud of how much effort and time that I put into my work but I am also proud of when I went and showed my buddy my Tynker project even though I felt nervous.  Callie

Learning about coding is definitely important because there’s lots of jobs and challenges in school that include coding.  It’s also important to help get electronics working, you need to know coding for electronics.  Dylan

Learning about coding is important because if you want to invent robots you need to code them and you can’t code them if you don’t know how to.  Kasey

Tynker could also be used to explain things, test people’s knowledge, make games, make movies, make puzzles and many more things.  Kathryn

Tynker could also be used in Creative Arts and German.  Harper

Photo Gallery

 

Year 5 Robot Project

Thomas the NAO humanoid robot returned to our school in Term 1 this year and this time, the Year 5 classes were the main participants in the AISSA Humanoid Robot project.  The focus was to see how the robot could be integrated into the new digital technologies curriculum and what effect it would have on student learning and engagement.

The students learnt how to programme virtual (on screen) robots using the Choregraphe software, which included exploring and using box commands and timelines.  They then thought of a creative scenario where they would need to get Thomas moving – for example, to escape from a jungle, to cross a road or to get a better view at the basketball.  The students were then asked to design an algorithm on paper, using any method they could think of, and then use this algorithm to write a programme to eventually run on the robot.  When complete, students were able to run their project on Thomas and video their work.   Some students did some extension work where they learnt how to make the virtual robot do repetitive movements using the ‘Counter’ box.

The data collected before and after this project showed substantial improvements in the student’s ability to design and write algorithms, to use a visual programming language and to understand programming concepts such as sequence and repetition.  Students commented that it was useful having a real robot to test their projects on because the real robot would sometimes behave differently to the virtual robot because it was a 3D object moving around in the real world.  It was also highly engaging and personable.

This video shows some of this amazing work from our year 5 students.

Year 6 Girls

To encourage our year 6 girls to explore STEM subjects, they each had two 1 hour sessions with Thomas.  In the first, they learnt similar programming skills to the year 5 students, using Choregraphe’s box commands and timelines.  They were then able to write a small programme to get Thomas moving or interacting with them.  One group of girls explored voice recognition and branching (conditional) commands.  They programmed Thomas to ask them what their favourite animal was, and then depending on their answer he would give different responses.  This was a real eye-opener for the girls and they could see real-world uses in libraries etc for such technology.

This video shows the girls work and some of the voice recognition projects that they programmed.

Ukelele Club

For a bit of fun, some Year 4 girls helped programme Thomas to sing along with the Ukelele club.  Check it out …

 

On Monday and Tuesday this week, our Year 4, 5 & 6 classes participated in a world-wide event called the Hour of Code.  The Hour of Code is a global movement by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries through a one-hour introduction to computer science and computer programming.

During the hour, we discussed what coding (or programming) is, what kinds of devices can be programmed and how devices can be programmed.  We talked about some exciting areas where coding is becoming increasingly important, such as robotics, medicine (ie 3D printing of artificial limbs), digital animation, farming, communication and even the fashion industry.

The students then selected one of four online tutorials that introduced programming concepts and extended their skills in coding.  They learnt about commands such as move forward, turn left, turn right, repeat, repeat until, if-then-else and so on.  Using drag and drop blocks, they were able to programme the characters in the activities to draw interesting shapes and patterns or work through mazes and puzzles, dodging obstacles along the way.  They learnt that the ordering of commands is very important and that commands such as repeat can save 100’s of lines of code and make the coding task a lot quicker.

If your child would like to continue with their tutorial at home, or look as some other excellent activities please see the Hour of Code page on this blog by clicking here or go to https://code.org/learn

Year 4s – We did the Hour of Code