Remix

Today, the students learned how to explore existing Scratch projects and Remix them.  Students had the most fun working with the DJ and the pong style game.  Several students began working on music video remixes and several started brainstorming how they could make their own Minecraft project!

Broadcasting and Receiving

Today we practiced with the Broadcast/receive technique a bit more.  We played a game where students were the computer and they had to look up what word they received and then try to broadcast the second part of their joke:

After some practice, we got back on the computers and the students worked on their own jokes.  Some of them were able to add additional characters and some added their own laugh track!

They also started working with motion in Scratch.  Once they got their sprites spinning, there was no stopping them (I got dizzy just watching them!).

Do you know a good joke?

Today we worked on interactivity in Scratch.  The students learned to create a joke!  We started with my pretty lame joke:

But it allowed us to explore some new tricks, such as changing the direction of the sprite, and how to take turns.  It took quite a bit of practice to get used to the broadcast/receive, broadcast/receive part of it.  We probably need a bit more practice!

Starting from Scratch

Students started working in Scratch today (you can check out this programming environment atscratch.mit.edu )  Today was mostly students exploring and getting to know their new environment.  They quickly found the sound settings and spent some time learning how to add sounds to their Scratch workspace.  They also practiced adding different sprites and editing their sprit

More Turtle Art!

The Programming and Robotics Camp students are making great progress so far!  We had our first in class surprise challenge and most of the students were able to create some Turtle Art squares and circles without any help from their notes!  Several even figured out the tricky equilateral triangle problem!

Some of the tutorials have produced some beautiful graphics:

Next week, we begin Scratch programming!  Can't wait to see what they will create!

Turtle Art

So far our Programming and Robotics Camp students have been exploring Turtle Art.

Turtle Art is based on the Logo programming language which was developed in 1967 and was popular in classrooms in the mid-1980s.

n Turtle Art, students use building blocks to give commands to the Turtle drawing icon.  Forward 100 would cause the turtle to move forward 100 pixels.  Right 90 would turn the Turtle 90 degrees to the right.  

The students are working on the Turtle Art Tutorial cards and getting started on some great things!

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2013 FBISD Programming and Robotics Camp!  

We welcome students from Mary Holley Elementary and Barbara Jordan Elementary to our PRC being held this semester at Sartartia Middle School.

Our students have begun working with Turtle Art which uses programming blocks to create graphics projects.  We are really pleased with our progress so far and look forward to seeing more soon!