{"id":90,"date":"2013-05-07T09:44:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T09:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2013-05-07T09:45:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T09:45:28","slug":"hide-and-seek-a-scratch-and-makey-makey-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Hide and Seek &#8211; a Scratch and Makey Makey Construction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This one isn&#8217;t mine &#8211; 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&#8217;t <a title=\"A Free Cross-Curricular Coding Course on May 18 in Prague\" href=\"http:\/\/scratchincontrol.eventbrite.com\" target=\"_blank\">reserved your free place<\/a> yet, do so now!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MHGa9hqBVpI\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Computer Moderated Boardgames<\/h2>\n<p>One of the things that students seem to &#8216;get&#8217; 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&#8217;s more complicated than that &#8211; but let&#8217;s keep things simple). Complete the circuit, and you close the switch. Whatever you&#8217;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&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Time for a 2B pencil and some copper conductive tape&#8230;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s enough.<\/p>\n<p>But we can do better than that. Other items also conduct electricity &#8211; including some metal cans and foil wrapped candy (always worth having stuff like this handy to show off &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, this isn&#8217;t an original idea &#8211; I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>My challenge to my students is: <em>what kind of boardgame would you produce using Scratch and a Makey Makey?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There is a lot of scope here for what they may want the computer to do for them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.714285714;\">Ask random questions when a playing piece lands on a specific square<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">Tell you if an answer was right or wrong<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">Keep track of players&#8217; scores, declaring who the winner is at the end<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">Play an animation\/sound if a piece lands on a particular square<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">Keep information hidden that one person inputs, and that others have to discover<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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&#8217;s base, clip the board to the Makey-Makey, write their Scratch code, and the game is ready!<\/p>\n<p>For those teachers who already incorporate a &#8216;design an educational boardgame&#8217; 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&#8217;ll look at a simple modification that anyone can make to increase the number of possible responses on a game board&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This one isn&#8217;t mine &#8211; 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&#8217;t reserved &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/?p=90\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Hide and Seek &#8211; a Scratch and Makey Makey Construction&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[44,33,34,14],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coding","category-updates","tag-boardgame","tag-game","tag-makey-makey","tag-scratch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scratchincontrol.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}