Virtual Showcase 2022

Last week was my 13th showcase of projects for my 4th grade after-school Code Club and my 2nd one that was held virtually. We made it. After three weeks of working on their major independent project and some online meeting craziness, they presented 14 final (or near-final) projects.

For our virtual showcase format, a project was presented by the creator, then the students played or enjoyed the project, and finally, they gave a quick positive feedback comment while the next student got ready to present. We had 14 projects presented in one hour. Amazing.

The final projects show a great deal of creativity and variety. It is incredible how much work went into some of these projects. I am very impressed with this group of students and grateful they all took the club seriously. I know it was not an ideal situation to learn to code in an online group but these kids were pretty motivated. They were also pretty self-sufficient and knew how to advocate for themselves to get the help they needed. They were also very patient when waiting for me to help them.

I enjoyed watching their projects progress over the weeks. Here are a few projects I am particularly impressed with: The Pipe is a maze game with a cool introduction, a couple of levels, and a secret code level.

I also like Cheesy Puffs clicker: This is a clicker game with a lot of flair. I knew this coder wanted to make a clicker game so I provided some material in our classroom to support him. I think he also found other clicker games on the Scratch community to get some ideas.

I am also really impressed by Shielder. I’m not sure how this was created but I don’t doubt that the student who created this could create this.

These next four really reflect the creativity and personality of their creators.

The quality of these projects is no different from any other showcase from other Code Clubs. It is just that this virtual code club felt like a lot of work because of the virtual nature of helping students with their coding issues remotely, but the results are gratifying. I hope they find more coding opportunities in the future.

Code Club Showcase Like no Other

I just celebrated my 12th Code Club Showcase, virtually. Last year’s Code Club went virtual after three weeks due to the Pandemic and our school switching to remote learning. There was no Showcase because what the students needed at the time was a fun weekly code break and not another virtual project to work on. We were all overwhelmed.

This year, while we are now back to full-time, in-school learning, code club had to be held remotely due to school protocols. Students were more amenable to this set up this year and we reached our max during sign-up and had about a 60% retention from week to week. That meant at least 10 coders online for one hour each week.

Luckily, I was able to send home printouts of our Code Club learning projects for the students to work from. Those school Chromebooks have really small screens. I don’t like to code using them and I wouldn’t want to have to split my screen to see the learning project and Scratch at the same time. I sent home a variety of project resources, more than we had time to work through, in case the students were interested in learning on their own.

Virtual Code Club Chatbot projects

From Code Club I use the projects Felix and Herbert, Chatbot, Balloons, Scratch Cat Goes Skiing and Create your own world. I also used the Scratch cards for Make it Fly and virtual pet. This is a mixture of my standard learning projects (like Chatbot and Virtual pet) and some based on what the students told me they wanted to make (Create your own world). I put in Scratch Cat Goes Skiing as an example of a vertical scroller for a couple of reasons. One we were meeting in February and two I needed a break from the side-scrolling Flappy Parrot project.

Scratch cat goes skiing projects from virtual code club

I used Google classroom for announcements, meet links, materials and the Game design document, GDD for planning the Showcase project. It worked out well. Most students completed the GDD and I was able to find Code Club projects or Scratch cards to support their ideas. A couple of the girls didn’t have an idea for their Showcase project so I showed them (at school) what I projects I had available and they choose the virtual pet and space junk type projects to work on.

They worked on their projects for four weeks. I was able to help debug during our meetings. The students were pretty comfortable with sharing their screen so I could see their code and what was going on. There were a few tricky bits of debugging that I got caught up in each week. If we couldn’t solve it together during the meeting, I would work on the problem and post the fix (if I found it) in Google classroom. I let a couple students work on their projects in the lab during a rainy recess. This just reminded me how much better coding together in person really is. I hope we can get back to it again.

For the virtual Showcase, students took turns introducing their project and giving hints or background on how to play and why they made it. It was very informal, no parents, just all the club members. Then we would play their game. I encouraged students to “heart” like the project and leave a positive encouraging comment like a cool, or I like your music, Sprite, theme, etc. In school I ask them to provide more detailed, helpful feedback, but this wasn’t school but a club, so friendly feedback was all that was expected. Everyone did great. Everyone was positive and encouraging.

Showcase of projects from Virtual Code Club 2021

When we finished sharing and enjoying each others showcase projects, I share a studio I had put together a my pick for the Best of Code Club Showcase projects. During the prep for our showcase, I had gone back and picked a favorite project from each of the previous Showcase of Scratch projects and maybe one or two more that I find super fun.

Best of Code Club Showcase projects

It was a delightful way to spend our last virtual hour together.

Virtual Code Club ends, another begins

I did twelve weeks of virtual code club. Each week I posted materials in our Google Classroom and sent out an email to parents as well. I occasionally hosted virtual office hours (about every other week) and I also tried to comment on all of the projects the students shared online.

I don’t know how many students participated beyond the few that came to the office hours or that shared projects online. Very few students posted comments in our Classroom and no parent ever responded to my emails after the first one. It is hard to believe no one had any questions, but it is easy to believe that with all of the other virtual classwork students were doing, no one had the bandwidth to add code club on top of it all.

Last virtual code club week post

For the final week, I thought about making another video of myself to say thanks for coming along with me on our virtual code club, but I made this Scratch project instead:

And challenged them to make a “Thank you card” Scratch project, too.

I posted Code Club certificates for them and closed the book on this experiment. In reflection, I learned that putting out weekly projects with no feedback as to how they are received is hard. I don’t like it. There is no way to change it on the fly to make it work for each student. I really don’t know what I need to change to engage more students, and yet I don’t think it was me that caused low attendance.  It was an optional part of virtual life during emergency remote learning during a pandemic.

So I put out project ideas that I thought they would like and that I liked, too. In the end, there are more Scratchers out there, creating projects that interest them. They may not have the foundational skills I was hoping to instill, but they are part of the Scratch Community and will find it for themselves or perhaps seek out more opportunities and working on more passion projects.

A code club member and Scratcher following his own interests.

Another new Scratcher working on their own passion project.

I’m starting my summer virtual code club through the public library today. I’m hoping some kids come so I can get some feedback and learn to be better at being a virtual code club coach.

Tales of Hour of Code 2016

Hour of Code or Computer Science Education Week was well received by the school this year. Every class from Kindergarten to 4th grade had the opportunity to work on one of Code.org’s Hour of Code tutorials during their computer lab time. This is Code.org’s third year of promoting a week of computer science education and I’ve supported them each year by introducing these tutorials to my students.

This year Minecraft and Moana were the big hits, as well as Angry Birds and Star Wars.  The tutorial options are a great way to give students choice in the learning and they are so fun.  Students can’t believe they can play Minecraft at school.  I like the new Minecraft Designer tutorial.  I felt it gave the students a peek at the code behind the game and allowed them a lot of freedom of choice and freedom to be goofy.  What 8 year old wouldn’t want a chicken that lays diamonds!  Meanwhile they don’t even realize how much they are learning about how to program.

1st grade Hour of Code activities

I do like to see who has that algorithmic thinking skill and is able to solve the tutorial puzzles independently.  For 2nd graders in general, Moana and Minecraft have pretty difficult concepts, like algorithmic planning, iteration and events (in Minecraft Designer).  Some of them look to each other for help, sometimes I have to read the directions to them, sometimes I have to be Steve or the boat so they can see how it turns in place and moves forward.  One 2nd grader surprised me at how easy the tutorial was for him.  I called him a Coding God (they are studying Ancient Greek Gods right now). He thought that was hilarious. I hope he signs up for Code Club when he is in 4th grade.

 

In addition to general class Hour of Code activities, my three math enrichment classes completed their Scratch math games.  That’s 27 new math games coded by 8-10 year olds. Here are the 4th graders, and 3rd graders studios. This week they played each other’s games and gave feedback in terms of Two Stars and a Wish, as I have done in the past.  I love this step in the game engineering process.  The students have to take the time to notice and test each game and learn to give good feedback.  I’m hoping we get time to improve the games based on the feedback they receive.

I will leave the option of Hour of Code activities for the rest of December – making it Month of Coding at our school!

There are so many tutorials at Code.org/learn.  I may have to try a few myself. I’ve been meaning to learn Javascript.

3rd Grade Scratch Game Makers

The 3rd graders that have been learning Scratch really came through during Computer Science Education Week and produced 11 goofy and wonderful little math games.  Last week we took the time to reflect and give feedback.  I am really impressed with their coding and want to jot down the lessons that occurred so I can repeat this again if I get the chance.

Here’s the list of lessons:

1. Intro to Scratch (Sprite, Stage, events, move, looks) -the basics introduced, time given to explore.

2. Etch-a-sketch (more events, pen)

3. Trick or Treat (if-then-else, ask-answer)

4. Draw Your Initial (coordinate system, glide, pen)   -for this lesson I had in mind to teach the Scratch coordinate system where (0,0) is the center of the screen.  I had them pick a Sprite of their choice and code it to glide around in the shape of their first (or last) initial.  I modeled gliding in a square while they followed first.

I handed out half sheets with the scratch grid on it so they could draw out their initial, figure out the coordinates then add the glide blocks.  Pen down and repeats were added at the end for extra flair.

5. Math game design outline (design sheet)

6. Math game coding (Pair programming)

7. Sharing and giving feedback

My expectation was that they’d code one math questions with two different outcomes like the Trick of Treat lesson.

Only this time they were working in pairs and had to come up with their own theme and math question.  They worked on it for almost two math sessions and then I put them up on the Scratch website.

 

Last week they got to play all the games and give each other feedback. One student thought they were going to get to rate the games and he declared he always gives bad ratings to online games.  Instead I handed out sheets for them to give each game “2 stars and a wish” (This is something I came across in a FutureLearn MOOC on Teaching Computing)

Giving good feedback is actually a lot of work.  I asked them to play each game twice, one time get the math question correct and then play it again and give the wrong answer.  Then they had to find two things they liked about the game and one thing they wished it would do differently.  I enjoy this feedback part of the game making.

Oh yeah, 4th graders made math games, too. What a difference a year and a bit of Code Club does to the complexity of the games made.  They also worked on giving 2 stars and a wish feedback this week.