This week we have been celebrating Matariki and we have had lots of activities and competitions. Many of these activities involved the theme of stars so decided to continue this theme with my Year 8 class this morning. We have been coding our mBots to move, make noises, make lights come on, react to sensors. Today, we were coding our mBots to move in a star pattern.
First of all, we drew stars on paper without taking our pencils off the page.
Then we looked at what we would need in mBlock to code the star. They already know the repeat block.
These were the blocks they needed to use. The tricky part was setting the variables to the correct values so the mBot will turn the correct amount on the points of the stars.
The students showed fabulous resilience today and went about the task of trial and error really happily.
We went out into the carpark about half way through. We drew big stars on the ground and walked the path so they could feel the actions that the mBot needed to take.
When they were testing the movement of the mBots in the class, we decided to tape a board marker pen to the front so it could draw on the table top. The students could then see the motion clearer and see what changes needed to be made.
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The students have been writing this up on their blogs and explain it much better than me.
My Year 7 coding class are learning to make their mBots become autonomous cars. Part of that is to use the infra red sensor underneath the mBot to sense and follow a black line. To do this, the students need to understand a little about binary.
We started today talking about how they counted.
They all started counting for me out loud.
Then I asked them to add two single digit numbers together in their heads. Easy peasy. Answers were shouted out. Then I asked them to add 9 and 23. This took a bit longer in the head, and fingers were twiddled and counted.
Then I asked them to addf 329 and 73 in their heads. Some got there.
This was then written as sum on the board and they were all comfortable again.
I asked them how we know where to put the 73 under the 329 as they are different widths / numbers of digits. They then told me about units, tens and hundreds. Their teacher at intermediate will be proud of them.
After they had mentioned the units, tens and hundreds, we talked about how we count.
The name was DECIMAL as it is based on 10's. Every step to the left is 10 times bigger. We put numbers in them place slots tos ay how many of them there are of each.
I then introduced a new counting method. BINARY.
I used the class light switch as an example. How many switch places are there? 2. The switch can be on or off. The lights can be on or off. There are no threes or fours or others numbers. It is yeas or no.
BINARY counts in multiples of 2. I put the columns up to show them the difference. Each step to the left is multiplied by two this time. We did a few numbers together till they got it.
Binary Games
The first game we played was in the car park outside. The students put themselves into teams of four for the four columns we had been using in our binary examples. They each had two pieces of paper. One with a 1 on it and one with a 0 on it.
I wrote down numbers on a card and held it up. The teams had to shuffle themselves with their paper to be sowing the correct value in binary.
Here is a slightly chaotic video ...
When we went back into the classroom, I had some binary games ready on my class site for them to have a go at.
I thought that they might not appreciate this lesson as we did not use the mBots today, so they go no direct coding done. They did play some of the coding games that I have on my site too, but did not code the mBots.
Next week I plan to "test" their binary knowledge to see if what we did today was ok. This "test" will be in the form of an online quiz / game so they don't feel tested.
I hope this was enough for them to understand why we have to use a bit of binary when we code our rmBots to react to the black line.
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