2021 Courage

2021 is here and I’ve already had my first Library Code Club, but only one student showed up. I have to say, it is discouraging but not really unexpected. First day back after two weeks off, a Monday and during a pandemic. Fortunately, I have other coding activities on the horizon, which is encouraging. So I soldier on.

Keep the Shark Safe from the plastic pollution https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/469352931/

The lesson today in Creative Coders was our first from the new series of projects from Code Club called Protect our Planet. I presented Save the shark. My one student was willing to share his screen so I walked him through the game. He did a great job following directions and working with the code, testing it and making it near impossible to play, on purpose. He had a pretty decent game that I think he was happy with. He did not have a Scratch account and we had trouble logging him in, so I don’t have his game to share.

One key concept to understand in this project is the coordinate system of the stage. Thinking about the shark only moving along the x-axis (fixed y) and the food/trash moving along the y-axis (random, fixed x). The other is the idea of cloning. It is a powerful bit of coding. At one testing stage we hadn’t added the “delete the clone” code and the plastic started piling up at the bottom of the stage. “Just like the real ocean.” was his comment. We chatted about making a plastic eating robot shark game to “save the ocean”. That would be a fun twist on this project. I would definitely present this project again.

Other things that are coming are: 1) 4th grade Code Club – a joint, virtual adventure with a new coaching partner, 2) piloting a #gettingunstuck curriculum in 4th grade (super excited about this!!!), and 3) a new round of #scratchpals. So that should keep me going through the winter.

Creative Stress Relief

My library coder’s club for middle school students started up again today. We are meeting once a month, virtually.

Creative Coder’s Club library publicity

Last month I received an email from Code Club about their latest new Scratch module and decided that these were just what I needed for my club.

Code Club email

It’s a new year and I won’t know who will show up, who will be new to Scratch, or who will be a returning Scratcher who has done my go-to starter projects. The Stress Ball project was a good fit as a first project for my code club.

My sample project:Pink de-stresser

I created a studio for the well-being module called Take Care and sent out the project info, virtual meeting info and hoped people would sign up and show up. We had 7 coders sign up.

Really cool coder project: Changing stress ball

Six coders showed up to code, which was fantastic! My librarian co-host had some internet trouble at the beginning, but I saw most of the coders faces on screen, which was exciting, and only two were returning students.

I started the meeting by going over the Scratch Community Guidelines and making sure everyone was signed in to their online account. They had the option of using one of my student accounts if they didn’t have their own. I sent out the info for these using the private chat feature of the meeting.

Halloween themed Stressball project

I went slowly through the project, sharing my screen as I created the stress ball, slowing down when coders asked questions. I really appreciated that they would advocate for themselves when they were following what I was doing. It is not easy to know how to pace a virtual meeting and was happy to hear the coders say something when they needed guidance. That doesn’t always happen, but with only six, it was easy for me to check on each student to see how things were going. The project was fairly simple, which helped.

Stress ball code

I made it through the basic project directions in the first half hour which left 15 minutes for everyone to make creative improvements before we shared and played our projects in the last 15.

Cat stress ball

I was really proud that almost everyone was able to add their creative touches, share their projects, and even add their project to our shared class studio. I was able to troubleshoot some issues by asking the coders to share their screens, but mostly those turned out to be account issues -like not being able to “share” a project in a new Scratch account until the email address is confirmed. (That coder was able to share and add his project to our studio later that day. Yay!) I find that adding projects to a studio can be a tricky endeavor sometimes. Navigating to the studio when you aren’t part of the class can be tricky. Inviting curators without knowing how to spell the Scratchers username is tricky. Adding a project you haven’t shared yet – oops, can’t do that – so it’s also tricky. I am getting better at troubleshooting and helping students be successful at this. And it leads to one of the fun parts of being part of the Scratch community- to be able to see and play each others projects.

One student declined to share and I could see there were some frustrations with the coding (and a parent had come in to view to help and explain he was still working on it and didn’t have anything yet). Perfectly understandable. If he needed more time, he had access to all the resources, he could come back at another time and add more.

Expert level coding!

I was also very impressed with one of my returning coders. He took the time to write up directions and play other club members projects and give them good feedback, too. He also helped me out during the Zoom meeting by leaving me comments in the chat. He also sent me a nice note. And exemplar Scratcher.

Sweet thank you note.

As we were signing off at the end and talking up next month’s Butterfly Garden project, I wondered if any of the coders were international students like we have had before. I think a couple of them may have been Canadian. One said it was dark outside at her house, so she’s definitely from a different time zone. I do hope they all come back next month. I sure had a great time. I hope they all did.

Take care

Mazes, the Dark Side

At the last Creative Coders Code Club, I asked my middle schoolers what they wanted to learn or work on next time. One student said a platformer and another was interested in a MAP (multi-artist-project).  While I’m still investigating how to facilitate a MAP with my group, I thought the easiest form of a platformer game would be to learn to code a maze. Mazes can be simple “navigate to the goal and don’t hit the walls”, or complex with levels, bad guys, goals, timers, scoring, (like platformers).

I found a couple of starter projects for mazes.  I liked the one from the Scratch Team (classic example) and from CSFirst.  I looked through and found a couple of other examples of mazes to include as examples.  I also came across a PacMan starter project from MEStech.  PacMan is a nice example of a classic platformer that’s like a maze. And who wouldn’t want to create their own PacMan game?

I’ve always wanted to make a 3d maze but am not interested in learning 3d rendering and the other way I was thinking to make it required too much planning. My spouse gave me the prompt to make a dark maze where you can’t see the whole path. So I spent a while creating a Sprite to look like darkness around a lighted lantern.

I knew I could use a gradient fill from black to alpha 0, but I had trouble creating the size of the lantern light that wouldn’t reveal too much of the path.  My third try worked well but I’ve decided that I am not a fan of the Scratch 3.0 vector tools.

Just the right size of light in the darkness.

I had to change the implementation of wall detection.  I couldn’t use “when touching blue” because my Sprite is supersized. So I changed it to “when orange is touching blue”

I still had areas of the map that were visible beyond the edge of my Sprite.  I thought I could increase the size of the Sprite to 200% to cover it but the maximum I could set the Sprite to was 135%.  Instead, I created two blackout Sprites the appear or hide depending on which quadrant I was in.  I’m pleased with the results although it needs a better map and more levels, etc.  It’s basically still a starter maze…

Today was our club meeting but it was also a snowy day.  School wasn’t canceled locally so we held the club but we only had three members attend.  One adapted my blackout maze idea with his own map and bad guy.

T̴͕̎H̶̥̉E̸͚̅ ̴͎͝M̸̅ͅA̷̮̕Z̶͍̉Ẽ̴͈

Another created his own impossible maze

Maze Thing

And the third tried to do both PacMan and a maze and was frustrated with what he could accomplish.  It was his first time and he spent time just playing with Scratch options (which I totally support – you got to know what is possible before you can create).

PacMan remix

Sometimes I feel 75 minutes once a month is not adequate time or frequency to facilitate the opportunity to play with Scratch, be creative and produce something to share with the group. It makes it tricky to plan lessons that fit a wide range of skills and inspire middle school students.

Finite State Machine

My monthly middle school library code club met this week on April Fools Day.  I thought it would be fun to make a joke or prank project but I wanted to give some boundaries to the students, too. I was a little bit worried that we might end up with some inappropriate projects.

I kept thinking about one project that a middle school student made during the Winter Carnival coding sessions.  In addition to his animation, he had a simple button on the screen that said: “Don’t press”. Of course, users are going to press it.  Pressing it made a really annoying and alarming sound. I thought this type of project would make a great April Fools project for my group.

When I started to make my own version of the “Do Not Press” project,

State 2 – Do Not Press

State 3 – Don’t do it

State 4 – your screen is broken

I realized that I wanted different things to happen: first one thing would happen, then something else, and so on. Each time you pressed the button something new would happen. I would need a way to check how many times the button had been pressed and use that to decide what would happen. I needed a finite state machine (at least a very simple one).

A finite state machine, FSM, is a basic computer science concept for controlling the logic of a program. The concepts center around keeping track of the state and what it takes to move between different states. This example is the simplest form of FSM. Now I had a lesson to teach the students and a fun prank project for them to make, too.

Using a single variable to keep track of the state of the project can come in handy for many types of projects. I had a couple of the coders in my mind who would find learning this concept useful in the programming they like to do.

The coders did find the project fun.  A few of them expanded on my starter project and a few them took the concept and used it in their own original way.

Don’t Press the Spacebar State Machine

I only wish I had not made the final state check “if state > 3” but “if state = 4” in my example.  That would have made it easier for the coders to add on more states.

Game using states

Start of a state machine

Timing & Video Sensing

Last week at Creative Coders Club we played with video sensing in Scratch 3.0. It was a ton of fun.

I originally wanted to teach the students some new coding techniques to add to their skill set and thought about introducing using timing and timers.  Adding the wait time block to music or animation can produce powerful effects.  Also, adding a count down timer in a game can make it more thrilling.  I remember having a Getting Unstuck challenge in this theme of using time-related sensing blocks. Here are the examples I presented to the students:

Getting Unstuck example https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/237650427/

Learning project from YoungHacks which shows a bunch of uses of timing blocks

Allenqin22’s project uses Cloud variables – another thing I need to introduce to my coders.

 

I also thought this reaction timer example would interest the middle schoolers.

 

 

While I was looking for examples, I found this featured project, called Excuse Generator, which the students did enjoy looking at. It was not related to any ideas I was presenting, but it was such a cool project by a new Scratcher I had to share!

Scratcher Rose-Pearl’s Excuse Generator

The biggest hit turned out to be the video sensing extension.  I knew it would be a great fit for this group when I found the Scratch Team’s Save the Minifigs project. This group would love creating something like that.   My co-leader Kathy agreed.  She found and printed the Scratch video sensing cards for the group.  Since we use Chromebooks, we had easy access to webcams.

We had some technical trouble with the Wifi, not related to Scratch and students had to work in pairs while we worked on getting more computers up and running. In the end, the students didn’t feel like they had enough time to work on this topic so we will revisit video sensing next month.

Here’s what they were able to accomplish.

Catness – pet the cat and get some strange effects.

(I was going to add more pictures but who wants to see my face multiple times? Just go to the studio link above and check them out.)

One funny note: As I was circulating around to help students, I would inadvertently cross through the webcam’s view of someone’s project and cause all sorts of havoc.  I would also misinterpret someone waving as someone needing help and zip around – through the webcam’s view of others, only to find they were just testing video sensing.  We meet in a library conference room with windows to the main area. I imagined we looked strange with all the arm-waving going on.

I can’t wait to continue with this next month.

New Year, New Scratch

Creative Coders Club on Monday was one of our best sessions ever.  The kids were really creative and funny and fun to work with.  The kids that came were all returnees and familiar with Scratch.  It was their first time working with Scratch 3.0 and despite a few grumblings about where familiar tools went, they were able to create some creative projects.  For such young people, they really seem upset about the changes to their coding environment.  I’m sure they will get used to the new version and not look back.

When I was looking for a project this month I noticed the tutorial from Cartoon Network on Animating an Adventure Game.  I knew the Creative Coders had been wanting to make an adventure-type game.  I added this option to our January studio and went through the tutorial myself so I could field any issues.  It has some fun character Sprites but turns out to be a simple “collect the gems” game. I felt it was a nice option for the club.

I also looked at the Scratch Design Studio for January.  I’ve been looking at the prompts each month since the Scratch Conference in August, hoping to find one that would work for this club.  The current theme is the Year 3000.  I felt it would really bring out their imagination and creativity.

I started out our meeting with a “Happy New Year” and a question for them. Did things seem different now that it was 2019 or did things just seem the same?  I told them that when I was their age, computers weren’t for kids and that 500 years ago books weren’t for kids either.  Then we brainstormed about what the year 3000 would be like.  That was the first hook.

Then I read them the Scratch Design Studio description.  I really liked some of the questions it asks, like what will food be? like or how will we dance?  It sparks the imagination. They shared their ideas and I had a difficult time getting them to not share all at once.

Next, I showed them the project I made about the year 3000.

My sample Year 3000 project

The other hook was the text-to-speech extension in Scratch 3.0.  I had read that some of the tools from Scratch 2.0 – like music and pen blocks – had been moved into the extensions section.  When I went looking, I found the text-to-speech extension.  It is easy to implement and works great.

 

I knew it would be a hit with the Creative Coders, and I was right.  (My only worry would be about the appropriateness of the middle school students – and I let them know, a few times, what my expectations were).

Everyone incorporated text-to-speech in their project and everyone used it appropriately. Whew.

There is not much time in an hour to imagine and create a project but the kids managed to work hard and when I told them they had only 10 minutes to get something ready to share, a few of them revised their big ideas into something manageable.  Two (of ten) said they would finish later.

In the last ten minutes, I showcased the projects they made and added to our January 2019 studio.  We laughed and enjoyed each other’s creativity and imagination.

The very funny “So boring” Year 3000.

Another very funny text-to-speech Year 3000 project.

I highly recommend trying out the text-to-speech extension blocks and the different voices.  It is a little tricky to have the “text-to-speech” and “say” blocks sync up (like closed-captioning) but is worth it to be able to see and hear the project.

I hope some of them submit their projects to the Scratch Design Studio and I hope next months SDS theme is just as fun.

Happy New Year and kudos to the Scratch team for a great new version!

Summer Creative Coding Club

This July I’ve been leading a 4-week coding club at the public library for middle school age students.  It is a 1.5-hour session for up to 12 students. Kathy, the children’s librarian, is my co-leader. She sets up the library space, takes care of the sign-up list, and prints project resources we use, in addition to supporting the students during the sessions.  We worked together during the school year, co-leading Creative Coding Club, which met once a month, and because of its success, we are planning to offer it again this fall.

We have this great space at the public library (although the projector doesn’t have the greatest quality display).

In early June we decided which projects to present during the 4 summer sessions:

1) RockBand/Pong  (both good intro to Scratch or refresher projects)

2) Chatbot  (one of my favorites. We have done this one before but it is very open-ended and worth repeating)

3) Flappy Parrot (a favorite of my 4th-grade code club and one I haven’t done in the library setting)

4) Makey-Makey (piano and cardboard- a great way to end)

Session #1

About a week before our first session World Cup soccer was making news headlines which got me thinking about all the sports-themed Scratch projects my students have made. So I went looking and found a Code Club resource with a soccer theme which Kathy printed. (our Creative Coders is a registered Code Club).  Kathy also had the Scratch Music cards available as well.

I created a class studio Summer #1 and added a remix of the Code Club resources for Beat the Goalie.  It has the assets (Sprites and background) ready to add code blocks following the guide.  I wanted to add an example of a music project, too, so I made this one and coded up the baseball theme “Charge”.

My example music project

I liked the idea of giving the students two options each week. We have both returning Creative Coders and new-to-Scratch coders (plus a long wait list) for our sessions. To start with two projects of varying complexity will provide students with choice.  We hoped this would promote more creativity in their projects.  Plus, the session is longer and there could be time to try both.

For a first meet up, things went well.  There are always technical challenges just getting students on the library Chromebooks and into the Scratch class accounts.  It was also a challenge at the end to get them to stop and share their projects with everyone.  But overall they were engaged, creative and supportive of each other.

The studio filled up with an even mix of music and soccer projects.  Since it was a bit chaotic at the end during the time we wanted everyone to check out each other’s projects, I took some time at the beginning of the session #2 to share the projects from session #1. They seem to enjoy seeing their project displayed on the screen (and me struggle to play their game).

Session #2 

Along with Chatbot, I introduced the Pen blocks and added a couple of examples from Scratch Started Project resources in the Summer #2 studio – this gave them a second choice of projects, which worked well during session #1.

Students are starting to take advantage of the class session studio to look at the examples, remix the resource projects and share their final projects for the group. I finally feel like I am putting some of the features of the Scratch teacher/class account to good use.  Both projects were hits with the students.  Kathy noted it was exciting to see them working so intently on their projects and then be so proud of what they created!  It is why I keep doing this.

Session #3

Coming up! I received a ‘final notice’ email (and saw on Twitter) about Code Club’s Moonhack 2018 project, so I’ve added it as our second option for session #3, although we’ll be coding a few days after the anniversary event.  This will be a new project for me, so it should be fun.

New Code Club Starts

I am collaborating with the children’s librarian in my city to run a monthly code club for kids 8-12.  Our first meeting was last Monday.  We had six kids show up.  I knew three of them from two years ago when they were in my after-school 4th grade Code Club.  It was great to see them again.  The other three were mostly new to Scratch.  One of the coder’s grandmother stayed for the session and we set her up to play and learn Scratch, too, and she jumped right in a made a Chatbot project.

I knew we were going to be using the library’s Chromebooks, so I set up a teacher account and a class along with some student accounts.  I figured a few of the coders might have a Scratch account already.  One said he did but didn’t remember it.  They all ended up using one of the class accounts.   That made it easy for sharing their projects at the end of the session.

Chatbot is one of my favorite projects from Code Club World.  It requires only one Sprite and Stage, is interactive, and the projects can become very creative very quickly.   It introduces the conditional block “if then, else”, a powerful, useful coding block for decision making.  It also introduces the ask-answer block pair as a quick way to introduce interactivity. The expert coders sort of remembered Chatbot but were very happy to revisit it.

By the end of the session, everyone was successful in setting up a Chatbot and coding an “if then, else” block at the least.  Some added more complexity with movements and costume changes. It was fun to see the different, creative takes on Chatbot.  The coders shared their projects, even though some were not complete and we played them all through.  I put them in our October project studio and liked them all.

I thought the English/Spanish Chatbot project was a great idea – it could be a cool way to show what you’ve learned from Spanish class.

We asked the club members what types of projects they wanted to work on in future meetings.  I heard ideas ranging from Ghost Busters, Pong, anything with horses, to a platform game. Good ideas!  We are hoping more kids sign up and we can grow the club a bit.

It was great to be back working with Scratchers.  My after-school Code Club starts up next week. More new Scratchers.