Guest expertsOn November 30th, I invited the University of Victoria CODEMAKERS team to come and do a free presentation to my class. I booked them to do a presentation where they talked a little about gameplay and gamification, taught a lesson on coding with SCRATCH and then attached the MAKEY MAKEY s to act as controllers. I am a tactile learner so this was a fantastic opportunity for me to see how all the components worked together. in advance to the UVic Presenters visit, I put students in groups of two (with two groups of three). I have 28 students, and not enough screens to have each student with a device, yet. I didn't assign the groups, I let them choose. This will help me decide groupings that work well together and ones that need support. For the next activity, I will assign groupings. As a note, my teaching partner had the same presentation, but did have access to a class set of Chromebooks so was able to have a 1:1 ratio of devices to students. His class was much quieter, there was a lot more social learning going on in my class. While the social learning wasn't as necessary when the presenters were giving direct instruction (in fact at times had to duplicate the instruction so each partner would have a chance to try each step). The students were engaged for a complete double block of coding instruction and application. The instruction was very proscriptive, the students were coached to complete the steps and everyones games were virtually identical. Basically we followed a tutorial, however every group had a completed game, every group got to try the Makey Makeys. Students were engaged and developed foundational skills. Students, in groups of two or less, made a simple controllable race car game. If the car was driven off the "track" it would restart. If students were able to make it around the track, they gained a point. There code looked like this When the Presenters moved to incorporating the Makey Makey, they said that middle school students had difficulty understanding how the Makey Makeys worked. They said that they found it easiest for them to just outline a step by step diagram on the whiteboard and just tell them how to do it. While the programming was entirely engrossing for the students, the Makey Makey portion seemed a little rushed, and they were definitely less engaged. However, the good news was that their off task behaviour was to either share their games with their peers, or play their peers games. I did encourage making the Makey Makey controllers, but I also let students play each others games. It was after all, what the main point of the lesson was. Making the curricular leapBecause science class is a 6/7 split, we started on the grade 6 topic of the solar system. As we finished up the unit we had the timely opportunity to watch the Insight Martian Lander Mission live. It was while I was watching the students code that I decided to add a twist. I wrote on the white board: With what you now know about programming a racing game using SCRATCH, during the STEAM blocks onFriday, you will code an INSIGHT Mars Lander Mission game. I asked students to start to take notes and share ideas about what a Mars Lander game might look like. After the UVic students left, I showed my students a simple Lunar Lander game from the 80s, found here http://moonlander.seb.ly. Next entry will detail that adventure......
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April 2019
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