One thing I started last year, which has worked well for us is a Monthly Scratch Challenge!
Usually, I get the inspiration from discussion in class, when a student says something like, “Wouldn’t it be great if…”
This month, the inspiration comes from the Secretary of State for Education in England. I told my class about the way my Twitter feed transmogrified into the Roger Hargreaves appreciation society in the wake of the debate he has stimulated, and the link one colleague had shared to a Mr Men avatar generator – as an example of a Twitter-based PLN providing access to ideas and resources you might never have the time to uncover on your own.
“But I’m not that impressed,” I said. “It has potential, but I wouldn’t have done it that way!” And so, the challenge was set. If you had to make your own avatar generator, what features would you include?
My initial proof of concept is pretty rough round the edges. Certainly, it makes plenty of random Mr Men-style avatars I can screenshot and use as sprites in another application – but I’m sure my students can do better.
If you would like a year’s supply of monthly Scratch Challenges, and you’re in Prague this weekend, you’re more than welcome to pop in to Scratch in Control – our free Scratch Day event.
I’m starting to plan a follow-up event on November 30, as our contribution to European Robotics Week. If you would like to know more, drop me a line….
It’s human nature, as old as the Bible (see 1 Kings ch.18 for an example). When faced with totalitarian despotism, we respond with a joke. We ridicule what we fear. Michael Gove (UK Secretary of State for Education) fears that history courses could be dumbed down if teachers focus on empathy rather than facts, so he pokes fun at one attempt to encourage students to re-write the story of Hitler’s rise to power for a much younger audience. Those who fear that an overemphasis on history as a factual narrative leaves little time for analysis in turn lampoon Michael Gove as a Roger Hargreaves character. Needless to say, Russel Tarr’s response is much more measured and well thought out. I decided to wait until reading his reply before posting my contribuition to the debate…
Like Michael Gove, I too am no expert on the Mr Men and the Little Misses – although my daughter once created her own hilarious Scratch homage to the Mr Rude “Pull mah fingeurrr” interactivity that used to reside on Channel 5’s Milkshake pages. However, his concerns strike a chord with one activity I do in class which leans heavily on popular culture, for which I would publicly like to apologise in advance to the wider educational community, just in case Mr Gove learns about it…
What follows isn’t a new illustration. I even shared it with the teachers at the Google Apps for Education Summit in Dubai earlier this year to make a point.
There is one thing I have noticed over the years. Many students cannot draw using a computer. There are two main reasons for this:
There’s a steep learning curve – or as one student put it, after a month of working with Inkscape. “All those lessons, and I can now produce something that looks like a three-year-old drew it!” With limited time available, and with the ever-present need to produce instant, high-quality results, it’s no surprise that precious curriculum time isn’t usually devoted to vector graphics applications.
Instead, we turn to the range of excellent image search tools created by Google, and hopefully find time to teach the students about derivative works, attribution of sources, Creative Commons licensing and fair use.
But this isn’t the only way to get hold of a digital image. Often, when I want cartoon-style images of people for work in Scratch, I’ll use a South Park style avatar generator. There are plenty around. I usually use www.sp-studio.de for mine. As there’s always potential for cyberbullying if you give students a completely free choice of subject, I usually choose a theme for my students to investigate. If you would like to see my example Oliver! or Wizard of Oz sprite collections, I’m happy to share. So, I’ve seen my fair share of totalitarian dictators reduced to a two-dimensional cartoonification.
When introducing game design as a coding task in Scratch, one thing I warn other teachers about is the temptation to say to a class, “Just produce an educational game to show me what you’ve learned,” with little or no guidance. When I do this unit with my Year 8 students, we document our research and justify our choices long before we even start to think about coding. I have even gone so far to upload this version of what notto do that I share with teachers:
Ra-Ra-Rasputin – the game!
Yes, you have to use the arrow keys to move Tsar Nic around the stage while he is followed by the mad monk himself. If Rasputin touches Nic – the game’s up and Nic dies. If Nic can get Rasputin to move over the bullet, bomb and poison, then Nic wins.
You can see where this is going. Any time now, I expect an announcement along the lines of, “And so-called Computer Science teachers also ride roughshod over the History curriculum in their feeble attempts to make their subject appear ‘with it’. Why only yesterday, I was shown an example of an interactive cartoon version of the story of Rasputin in the style of South Park that bears little resemblence to the actual facts.”
If that does happen, remember, you read it here first. It’s my parody of a parody.
Now, obviously, if you want to learn more about the way I actually teach my educational game authoring unit, there’s still time to register for Scratch in Control in Prague on May 18.
This one isn’t mine – it was done by a small group of Key Stage 3 (Junior High) girls during a one hour workshop I led earlier this year. This is one of my case studies with examples that we will be looking at in more detail at Scratch in Control. If you haven’t reserved your free place yet, do so now!
Computer Moderated Boardgames
One of the things that students seem to ‘get’ very quickly is that a Makey Makey is really just a cleverly designed switch that you connect to your computer (OK, we all know it’s more complicated than that – but let’s keep things simple). Complete the circuit, and you close the switch. Whatever you’ve told the computer to do when that particular button is pressed, the computer will then do: make a noise, run through an animation, perform a calculation, move a sprite…
So, some people choose to become part of the switch by holding or attaching the earth to themselves. But there are other ways of completing the circuit…
Time for a 2B pencil and some copper conductive tape…
A thick dark graphite pencil trail will conduct electricity. So, we draw two halves of a circuit on some card and connect them to a Makey-Makey. If the lines are close enough, then using your finger to connect them will complete the circuit. For some applications, that’s enough.
But we can do better than that. Other items also conduct electricity – including some metal cans and foil wrapped candy (always worth having stuff like this handy to show off – just make sure you tested it beforehand). However, you can alse design your own buttons or playing pieces and stick a short length of copper conductive tape on the base.
As usual, this isn’t an original idea – I’m sure I read of a virtual zoo game on the Makey-Makey forums where a player who correctly places an animal in its enclosure is rewarded by a short animation.
My challenge to my students is: what kind of boardgame would you produce using Scratch and a Makey Makey?
There is a lot of scope here for what they may want the computer to do for them:
Ask random questions when a playing piece lands on a specific square
Tell you if an answer was right or wrong
Keep track of players’ scores, declaring who the winner is at the end
Play an animation/sound if a piece lands on a particular square
Keep information hidden that one person inputs, and that others have to discover
They come up with a game board design, cut holes in the card where they want the playing pieces to interact with Scratch, and then draw their circuit on a second sheet which fits under their game board. Design some 3D playing pieces and stick a length to conductive tape to each one’s base, clip the board to the Makey-Makey, write their Scratch code, and the game is ready!
For those teachers who already incorporate a ‘design an educational boardgame’ assignment to their classes, this activity offers an enhancement that may engage some students looking for a different type of challenge. The coding side of things can be as simple, or as complex as they choose to make it. At Scratch in Control, we’ll look at a simple modification that anyone can make to increase the number of possible responses on a game board…
You’ve heard your parents say, “Don’t play with your food!” If you’re a parent, you’ve probably said it yourself, even if you vowed a million times that you would never turn into a carbon-copy of your parents…
The Makey-Makey changes all of that. Most food is conductive – so what you eat, can become a button to click…
One of my GCT colleagues recently released this short instructional video on the art of making marshmallows talk.
I had to respond by releasing this footage shot earlier this year:
and
enjoy…
Those of you who want to see a performing candy band in action – come to Scratch in Control
One of the topics we’ll be doing a short case study on at Scratch in Control is the place of coding as a problem solving tool in Gifted and Talented provision. To summarise the approach we’ve used successfully: where appropriate, allow for a coded option to stretch G/T students. If you want to know more, either join us at our Scratch Day event in Prague, or buy us lunch…
Today, we’ve had a G/T curriculum enrichment day for Junior High (KS3) students. Many of them already have some Scratch experience, but not so much familiarity with control technology. With only an hour, projects needed to be simple I decided that the best approach would be to offer three differentiated challenges.
Level 1: His Master’s Voice
I showed the group a script for a voice activated robot on the screen, by varying the loudness and timing of my commands, it (usually) performed as expected, spinning, jumping and dancing when ordered to. We discussed possible improvements and refinements that they could make if they were to take on this challenge.
Screenshot of a voice activated robot that responds to different commands (most of the time)
Level 2: Make Yourself a Cyborg
I then showed the group my simple Robot of Truth controller, connected to a Makey-Makey. We discussed different user-interfaces that they could draw with a 2B pencil. Some of them had existing projects that they wanted to enhance by making their own custom controllers.
The 2B pencil skeleton of the Robot of Truth – clips attach to the bottom (middle clip is GND/earth). When you touch the left/right hands, it completes the circuit for true/false questions. A Light Louse looks on, bemused by it all…
Level 3: Activate Skynet!
A Makey-Makey will let you easily make almost anything into a button for Scratch, but if you want more options involving both input and output , S4A with an Arduino make a great combination. I set up a simple breadboarded circuit including a light sensor and a DC motor; showing how just a few blocks of code would enable you to use the LDR as a simple proximity sensor to set off the motor. We discussed some possible projects, and I had a couple of students prototyping a contactless game controller and a Rube Goldberg burglar alarm.
An Arduino connected to a light sensor (via a resistor) and a DC motor (via a transistor). When the light sensor is put into shade, the motor starts…
In short, it was a very fruitful afternoon spent with two groups of creative and enthusiastic students.
Another Makey-Makey project in our series of outrageous user interfaces.
A control cylinder – powered by a makey-makey
This one arose from some discussion in the wake of the ghost controller. I have a student who is thinking about what sort of user-interface you could build for exploring a 3D environment with a Makey-Makey.
You can see where this is going – tune in next week for the washing-up glove of power,,,
One of the possibilities we discussed was having an object to grip – like a baton. This could incorporate a glove, but I decided to have a go with recycling some packaging foam and a cylindrical tube more commonly used for holding stackable cruchy potato-based snacks…
I’ve taken several shots of the process, so I will put them together as a slideshow later. But the photo aboves should give a reasonable idea of how it’s put together. First I drew an outline of my hand on card to position where the buttons for each finger should go.
On this card, I used a 2B pencil to draw the circuit for my buttons – testing each location with a piece of card which had conductive tape attached to it. I then took another card, slightly thinner – and cut out holes to eexpose only the button areas. On the surface of this, I added the foam packaging to raise the card/conductive tape top half of the button above the graphite part.
As a mechanism, the buttons work reasonably well when everything is in place.
The card layers were then stuck round the outside of the cylinder and clipped to the makey-makey. A simple Scratch script was used to test the device.
Refinements
I think a redesign of the graphite side of the buttons could improve the responsiveness of the cylinder. Also, the layout for the buttons is for a hand resting on the cylinder. Next time, I shall design for the hand to be gripped round the baton.
It would be possible to add extra features. This one used four fingers for up/down/left/right and the thumb to emulate a mouse click. It would also be possible to add a tilt switch mechanism for the device.
Many years ago I coined the phrase ‘conceptual magpie’. Some people would argue that I’m not the first to think this way – depending on which online source you believe, either Dali or Picasso apparently said “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Like so many other teachers, I trawl forums, twitter feeds, blogs and books in search of that elusive holy grail – inspiration. The other day, I saw something that caught my imagination @joshburker embedded a video from https://t.co/Jyle5Z2KHp and I knew I’d have to introduce the Robo-Sharks to this when we next met.
We’ve done outrageous user-interfaces before:
A Red Nose Day Joy Balloon
The Joy Can – a liquid-filled 3D tilt switch
Computer-Moderated Board Games
Bottle-top Buttons
Come to Scratch in Control – our free one day training course for teachers in Prague on Scratch Day, May 18 2013 – and you’ll see some of these (and much more) in action. But rather than use a Makey-Makey, I decided to do this one with a Picoboard – just for fun.
Here is the entire setup – the maze script running on the computer, the maze taped to the top of the ghost controller and a Picoboard peeking out from under it.
There are loads of ways we could have tackled this – one of the Robo-Sharks suggested we could have just taped a JoyCan to the bottom of the maze controller. That’s what I like to see – build on an existing solution. But not this time. I wanted something that would be reasonably easy for other teachers to replicate in class. And, as another student had already pointed out; letting kids loose with cans that are half-full of water in close proximity to computers is tempting fate a little…
So, just to be different, I decided to use four reed switches (they call them jazýčkový spínač – tongue switches – here in the Czech Republic). They switch on/off if they are in close proximity to a magnet. I taped each of them to the outside of a thin plastic container, and put a magnet – the type you use to attach things to fridge dooor and whieboards – to roll around inside it.
Here is the underside of the controller, you can see the reed switched, taped to the plastic container, plus the magnet used to turn them on/off as the controller is tilted. The clips are connected to the Picoboard
This was then taped to the bottom of a spare thin card box I just happened to have lying around, and a copy of the maze I’d drawn in Scratch variant BYOB was taped onto the top. No expense spared here – Heath Robinson, Rube Goldberg, you aint seen nothing…
The most difficult part of the whole exercise was ensuring that a downwards left tilt corresponded to a left roll of the ball on the screen and so on…
It was fun, reasonably cheap (4 reed switches cost about the equivalent of US$4 here) – the components can be easily re-used/recycled and the coding can be as simple/difficult as you want.
To extend it – a classier endgame sequence would be a start, A timer, a score including penalties for hitting the edges. I’d favour an ‘augmented reality’ style of approach – taking a photo on the maze controller and perhaps shifting it slightly when the controller is tilted.
My students wanted to add monsters to avoid…
Personally, I’d go for a curriculum-related option instead. Navigate the maze to collect three numbers that add up to 100 or which are all factors of 108. Make your way to the exit while spelling out a key vocabulary term by rolling the ball over specific letters placed in strategic points in the maze.
In case you’re wondering, yes the pitch video for our Indiegogo campaign was done entirely in Scratch! I’ve uploaded the source code to the Scratch website.
The cog was first drawn in Scratch and then converted to a sprite. However, you will notice that I should have kept the cog and its shadow separate in order to achieve a more convincing 3D effect when animating them.
The presentation timings are co-ordinated by using five different broadcasts to mark the transitions between the different phases.
The video was recorded using Camstudio – free screen capture software, and then tidied-up and converted to a smaller wmv file using Windows Live Movie Maker.
