Make Create Educate

Money is conductive... The purpose of this post is to show how to create a money counter using Scratch and a Makey Makey . What does the code look like? Code for creating a money counter. What are the orange blocks? The Orange blocks are variables. When you have a value that you want the computer to store you create a variable. In this program there is one variable for each coin, one for calculating the total "checksum" and one to prompt the user for the answer. What does the stage look like? Students need a way to track how many times they have counted a coin. To do this you can display the variables on the Scratch stage. This gives a visual tally of each coin. The checksum total is hidden by default but can be displayed for 1 second to check the total by pressing the "a" key. When a user presses the "f" key the user is prompted to add the visible coin totals and enter the total it in 0.00 format. Scratchie the cat will announce if th...

This post will be referring to a publicly available and free project made by CodeClub Australia.  CodeClub Australia has some wonderful projects that are documented for beginning Scratchers. Each year they run a program called MoonHack . In 2020 there were over 34000 participants in the project worldwide.  They have multiple projects for a range of ages from early years to high school.  https://moonhack.com/projects/ The 2020 the " Space CleanUp " project focused on the problem of Space Junk. There is a 10 min video discussing the problem. There is also an additional Blog Post with some extra reading about Space Junk should you be interested. This project could be used in the Year 5 space content for Australian Curriculum. It is suitable for year 4 and up. Or year 3 with some experience coding. The projects will take an experienced coder about 45mins. But less advanced coders could take up to 2 x 1 hour lessons. Before using it in your class, be sure to complete the p...

To enable students to continue working at you you may need to teach them how to log into online tools at school before schools are shut down. For offline tasks you will need to prepare resources and send them home in a pack, eg: construction may require specialist materials, coloured paper, paper clips, etc. Pack up and send home.  It will be difficult to teach new content in this time as now all students will complete the tasks unsupervised. It is a very difficult time. Online Tools e-Safety Commisioner  https://www.esafety.gov.au/educators/classroom-resources Online tools and videos that could be used as stimulus for a question and answer or "design a campaign" to educate kids about online dangers https://aca.edu.au/resources/ Teacher will need to sign up (for free) with their school account and upload student names and distribute user names and passwords. I would be ideal if you do this before the school closes so students know how to use it....

Year 1 students have been learning about weather and how it changes. So we decided to make an animation of  changing weather with Scratch Jr . This style of animation introduces coding concepts to young students and allows conversation about the teaching content in any key learning area. The group had recently had discussed temperature and different types of clouds. Firstly they named the program Changing Weather. Then they added an outside background of their choice. They then added multiple sprites Sun Cloud Storm Cloud A person without a face Adding a face to a sprite Add a sprite with out a face. Tap on the paintbrush. Tap on the camera. Tap on the face. Position the camera to take a photo of your face. Tap the tick. The photo will be inserted as the face of the sprite.  Creating your own sprite Students were required to create their own sprite for the rain. This required them to learn to use drawing tools, line thickness, line colour. Tap ...

There is now a range of books both fiction and non fiction that teach about algorithms and coding concepts. These books can be used individually or in series. Picture Books If I were a wizard by Paul Hamilton Paul is an Australian author that has published a sweet story with Australian bush animals. Each page of the story introduces a coding concept. The back of the book has a brief definition of the concept and how it links to the story. This style of book is useful for teachers wanting to learn more about coding concepts and gives key terms that can be researched to find project ideas and further information. The concepts included in the story include: Repeats and Loops Sequence and Order Algorithms Variables Conditionals Functions Debugging and Patterns Paul's website includes additional resources that can be used in conjunction with the book, apps, augmented reality, games, and lessons.  https://www.wizardcodingbook.com/ This book would be suitable as a story ...

Ed update: This blog was published in MicroMag Issue 6 Nov 2016. The Microbit can be used to create music. I recently watched the MicroMonsters YouTube video. The video is easy to follow and the purpose of the video is to learn to use a Piezo speaker. So of course I composed the code but I found the code very long and complex. Then I wondered how can you simplify the code to make it shorter and easier to manage. Definition Functions are a way to store information that can called at anytime during the program. Functions remove the need to type the same code over and over and allow you to reuse repetitive pieces of code. This reduces the number of lines of code and errors. Example For example, the tune of Star Wars has several parts that are repeated throughout the song.  By creating a Function for each repeating part it is possible to use the function multiple times. This creates simpler code. The first phrase of Star Wars can be rewritten as SWIntro . It con...

What is Binary? Binary is a base 2 numbering system. It uses 2 numbers 0 and 1 to count and is used by computers to transmit information. 1 digit is a bit. 8 digits is a byte. More information about Binary How does binary work? This video shows how Binary works. Need another explanation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD6lcIIOeic Curriculum links There is a requirement for all Australian schools to teach Binary from year 5-8. States not using the Australian Curriculum will have modified versions of what is required but binary is mentioned in both year 5-6 and year 7-8. If you are using a document that is based on the Australian Curriculum try searching your document for the AC codes below. In primary years primary often makes sense when taught following a base 10 lesson. Discuss the structure of the base 10 system and then introduce the binary system. Below there are resources both online and offline that can be used to teach this concept. Year...