Learning simple maths with shapes

If you were to ask a kid to draw a square and they would effortlessly get it done. Have you ever wonder if they really understand the definition of a square ?? Or a triangle ??  Getting things done is one thing, being able to describe or communicate effectively to another is a different story all together.

There is no doubt programming requires the use of logic, mathematical literacy and a little common sense, yet communication skill plays an important part to deliver clear and precise instructions in order for the computer to carry out the intended task.

How does math comes into picture with shapes ??

We all know that a closed shape has 360 deg, if we divide 360 by the number of sides of a shape, for example a square which has 4 sides, that will give you 90 deg on each side.

So, definition of a square is "a shape having 4 equal sides with 90 deg at each corner of the 4 sides".

Try working out a pentagon, triangle or a hexagon with your kids.  

Let’s start Scratch to draw a square. Get yourself familiar with the following blocks where we will be using it for our assignment.

You might like to shrink the sprite to see clearer how the lines are drawn. Drawing lines in computer sense means moving an object leaving a trail, and that’s where the “pen” blocks come into play.

Let’s work out a sequence for the script based on a flow chart before we snap the blocks together.

This is how the flow chart interprets :

1.  Clear all the lines whenever the program starts
2.  Draw the square beginning at position x = 0, y = 0
3.  “Get” the pen
4.  Move 100 steps
5. Turn 90 deg to the right
6. Repeat step (4) and step (5) 3 more times
7. “Keep” the pen when finished drawing

Take note of the loop. As a square has 4 sides, we only need to repeat the sides 4 times, unlike the “forever” loop covered in my previous post.

We can now snap the blocks as shown below and that completes our task.

Now, what if we want to draw a hexagon ???

Hmm……a hexagon has 6 sides and what’s the angle at each side ???

Divide 360 by 6 and that gives 60 deg.

Using the same script we had created, replace 4 with 6 in the “repeat” block and 120 deg in the “turn () degrees” block.  You should have something like below.

Try other shapes yourself like triangle, pentagon, etc. A closed shape is only valid if the number of repeats multiply by the angles should give you 360.

Scratch Tutorial

Here are some sites that will aid the beginners :

https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/dhawk/scratch/

http://learnscratch.org/

http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Video_Tutorials

http://myreadinglog.net/blog/beginning-scratch/video-tutorials-to-begin-your-scratch-projects/

I'll be more than happy to help if needed :-)

Learn to juggle, not a Juggler's way

My  previous post explained how Scratch programming blocks were snapped together to make a simple animation. For convenience sake, the script is reproduced below :

Always remember that the blocks are executed one at a time in succession. In conclusion, placement of the blocks over another is crucial. The “go to x: () y: ()” block is first carried out when the “Green Flag” button is clicked, followed by “move () steps”, and so on.

At some point, the rule does not hold depending on your application. Try re-position or juggle any of the blocks within the “forever” block in the above script. The animation may look the same to our naked eyes, but it makes a lot of difference as far as the script is concern.

Continuing with the above script, let’s add some graphics to embellish the backdrop. Click on the “Stage” and then the “Background” tab.

Click on the “Edit” button and the Paint Editor appears. Import the graphics from the built-in library.

You can select any of the images from the various folders. Select “woods” under the Nature folder for the purpose of this practice. Shrink the sprite by clicking on the “Shrink” button and your stage should look like below.

Note : Don't forget to click on the sprite when the “Shrink” button is pressed. Clicking only the 

           "Shrink" button does not minimize the size of the sprite.

That’s not the end. You can add sound, another sprite ,etc to make it more lively. Your imagination is the limit. 

Let’s add a sound “meow” to the cat whenever it hits the edge. Click on the “Sound” button on your left. If you do not see the “play sound (meow)” block on your screen but “play sound (pop)” instead,   that means you are still in the “Stage” Script Area. Click sprite1 (the cat) and it should appear above the Script Area as shown below 

Drag the “play sound (meow)” block and insert it below the “if on edge, bounce” block. The script should look like below :

Start the animation by clicking the “Green Flag” button. Oops !!! We got a bug.

Click the “Stop” button on the far right above the stage area.

The cat keeps "meowing" non-stop and we wanted it to "meow" ONLY when it hits the edge.

This is where the "decision making" blocks come into play. Creating a flow chart helps make the picture clearer.

We will add two blocks shown below, an “ if ” block for decision making, a “touching (edge)” to sense the edge

Snap the "touching (edge)” block into the blank space of the  “ if ” block. The final script should resemble below 

Trying exploring with with your own imagination with more blocks and sprites.

Happy Scratching

Getting Started

Many parents tend to freak out whenever “computing” or “programming” subject is brought up, and too often, it’s their own fear that limit themselves or their children the broader uptake in technologies.   

Technology has evolved since the dawn of smartphones. Gone are the days where it takes a person conversant in electronics to build an alarm clock.  With today’s advancement, a micro-controller and a display, with a little programming skill is all it takes to achieve that task. With Scratch, as a block based programming tool, there’s nothing easier than snapping the blocks together.

By the way, Scratch comes in 2 version. The latest version being Scratch 2.0, and the older version is Scratch 1.4. As mentioned earlier, other than interactive programming with Scratch, Arduino micro controller will be included to get things “physical”. The only stable derivative that I’ve tried so far is S4A, a Scratch 1.4 extension. Hence, throughout my blog, I’ll stick to Scratch 1.4 and S4A.

Download Scratch 1.4 at http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/

Start Scratch 1.4 once you have completed the installation. The interface should look something like below :

Make something move

On the Stage area, a default  image of a cat is loaded whenever Scratch is started. You can import or create as many images as you like, and each image is assigned a name Sprite1, Sprite2 etc. All the sprites are visible on the Sprite Thumbnail area.

Drag the “move (10) steps” block to the Script Area as shown below :

As the name implies, it moves a sprite 10 steps whenever it is activated. The number of “steps” represent each pixel on the computer screen. Try exploring the “move” block by clicking it with your mouse pointer and change the steps with different number. The sprite should move accordingly to the steps when the “move” block is clicked.

You can drag the sprite to anywhere on the Stage Area, which is 360 x 480 pixels wide, as shown below.

The sprite position is shown right above the Script Area, next to the sprite image :

Try to drag the sprite anywhere the Script Area, the sprite position changes accordingly.

Let’s create a building block, making the sprite move back and forth around the Stage Area. The program has to meet the following criteria :

1. Program starts upon clicking the "when clicked" block or the "Green Flag" button.

1. The sprite starts moving at position x = 0, y = 0 at the beginning of the program.
2. When the sprite hits the edge of the screen, turns back and move to the other end of the screen.

Let’s follow the above criteria  “sequentially”.

Criteria(1) - Click on the “Control” button from the Pallete Block. Drag the block as shown below

Criteria (2) –The sprite starts at position x= 0, y = 0 the minute "when clicked" block  is clicked irrespective of where the sprite is. , then move 10 steps continuously. 

Click on the “Motion” button and drag "go to x:() y:()" block to the Script Area

Snap the  "when clicked" and "go to x:() y:()"   blocks together. It should look something like below

Drag the "move() steps" block and snap it below  "go to x:() y:()" block.

Criteria (3) – The sprite turns back when it hits the edge of the screen.

We have to look for a block that does the job.  On the “Motion” button, scroll down the list of blocks and try to locate "if on edge, bounce" block. Snap it to below the "move() steps" block.

By now, your script should resemble below 

Are we ready to go ??? 

Let’s analyse the script before we begin. It is worth noting that the script executes each block (instruction) “sequentially” once at a time and it looks something like below in “flow chart” terminology.

When the "if on edge, bounce"  block is executed, it just stops there as there are no other instructions to follow, and we want the sprite to move continuously. To get around it, the solution is to create a loop so that it “repeats” the operation after the "if on edge, bounce" block. 

To create a loop based on the above flow chart, drag the "forever" block to the Script Area and insert the  "if on edge, bounce" and "move() steps" into the “forever” block. Your script should look something like below

That looks more sensible. Now, click on the  "when clicked" or the "green" flag on the top right  to start the program.

You will note the following :

1. The sprite moves very fast. 
2. When the sprite hits the right edge, it “bounced” back moving to the left direction upside down

While the sprite is still moving, slow down the speed by inserting the "wait () secs"  block as shown below

The sprite now moves 10 steps every 1 sec and this is too slow. Change the delay from 1 sec to 0.2 sec, or any value at your comfort.

Next, click on the “left-right” button as shown below

That should fix the “upside down” position of the sprite.

Somehow, something is still missing. The sprite doesn’t look vibrant, and we need to add a little “spice” to  the script with some animation

Under the “Looks” button, click on the “Costumes” tab

You will see two costumes, namely Costume1 and Costume2.

Note : Each sprite can have multiple costumes, either created by yourself or imported from the built-in library. You can have as many sprites as you like.

Imagine if the costume of the sprite switches each time it moves, doesn’t it give a bit of zing to the sprite ??

Return to the Script Area by clicking on the “Scripts” tab a show below.

Click on the “Looks” button, and insert the "next costume" right below the "move() steps" block.

Your script now should look like below

By now, the sprite should look more vibrant, “walking” back and forth the Stage Area.

Here's a good video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkhjX792yVI to help you started.

Physical Computing with Scratch and Arduino

In my previous post, I briefly touched on the 21^st Century Learning paradigm and Scratch, a visual block based programming tool developed by a collaboration between elementary educators and MIT computer science scholars (oh…..did I say Scratch is free ??). 

Since its inception in 2007, their web site has become a vibrant online community with (reportedly) more than a million Scratchers worldwide sharing and remixing their projects. Check out their site at http://scratched.media.mit.edu/, there are tons of information to learn and share.

A number of derivatives has emerged with added features that was not available in Scratch. The most popular being SNAP, developed by Jens Mönig of University of California, Berkeley. It’s a web-based application though, might not be favourable or suitable to those with connectivity issues

Next development well-worth mentioning created by Citilab from Spain, is S4A, short for “Scratch for Arduino”. It provides new blocks for managing sensors and actuators connected to Arduino micro controller.

With its pins mostly assigned to its specific function, it doesn’t provide any flexibility at all. But hey, what more do you expect ???  It’s free and a good start for beginners.  For those who likes to get physical (definitely NOT with Olivia Newton-John), S4A is absolutely right up your alley. 

Scratch and Arduino practically equates to Physical Computing !!!

More about Scratch coming up soon, where I’ll go through a short tutorial and some projects from there on.

Happy Scratching.

Let's start Scratching

There are many commercially available software in the market today purportedly claimed to provide computing skills to young learners, as a matter of fact, it is nothing more than just another captivating game to test their cognitive reflexes or a pre-designed program to teach what is “1 + 1”.

The concept of teaching computing skills to kids with coding and scripting is a challenge, and I would say almost impossible. The insipid language and frustrating syntax itself will drive them away, let alone creating interest in them.

Having said, how do we initiate kids to embrace programming interest without daunting them with all the programming jargons  ??   It might not be conceivable 30 years ago, but with today’s technology, it is feasible with the development of 21^st century learning skills and tools. If you google what 21^st Century Learning is about, the learning paradigm generally refers to the 3Cs. No…….I’m not talking about Cash, Cars and Condominium. It’s all about

• Creativity & Innovation
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Communication and Collaboration

Coming back to computing for kids, Lifelong Kindergarten Group of MIT has developed an educational software program, called Scratch, that supports the nine types of 21st century learning skills identified by the Partnership for the 21st Century (http://www.p21.org). These skills include:

• thinking creatively
• communicating clearly
• analyzing systematically
• collaborating effectively
• designing iteratively, and
• learning continuously

What is Scratch anyway ??

Scratch is a visual block-based programming tool where you snap together programs from logical building blocks that is dragged over from the blocks palette.

Scratch covers a range of educational and entertainment constructivist projects from maths and science, including simulations and visualizations of experiments, recording lectures with animated presentations, to social sciences animated stories, and interactive art and music.

How is it possible for parents (or teachers) who has no programming experience, teach their kids at home ??? As Scratch is developed to support one of the 3Cs mentioned earlier, you can join the Scratch Community where you can share and learn from the community. Bear in mind that there are more than a million Scratch users around the globe, and more than 3 million projects uploaded to the web, readily to be shared.   

I will also post some tutorials and projects as time goes, this is exactly what this blog is about.

In my next post, I'll talk about physical programming.