Playing Dodgeball in Tynker!

Tomorrow's snow day has given me the perfect opportunity to reflect back on our past week of 5th Grade Digital Literacy.  Last week, we finished up our Dodgeball games that we coded in Tynker using our tablets.  We have continued to practice good Pair Programming rules, and the process of working together to create code is becoming more natural to the students. 

The Dodgeball games were a great way to introduce Tynker to the students.  Each pair added actors, or the characters, a background and another object such as a treasure chest.  Each "actor" needing coding, and the students worked to have their characters move about the screen of the tablet when the tablet is being tilted.  We had a great discussion about the gyroscope sensor in the tablets and in smart phones.  It is what makes the tablet know that it is being tilted, and therefore, makes the game possible!  Ask your student about how this works and see what they have to say!

Our Dodgeball games have been so much fun to see.  There have been may customized versions of the game that the students have come up with, including some hand drawn characters.  I am so impressed with the focus and creativity that these 5th graders are showing.  You as families and loved ones should be so proud!

This week, we will begin a new coding project.  Again using Tynker, we will be exploring the idea of setting parameters in a game, and coding user input to set these parameters by creating a "Dinosaur Ecosystem."  This is a trickier bit of code, and may cause some frustration.  The students will be working independently on this program, but it doesn't mean that we won't be using our new collaboration skills to help each other out, and move forward!


All this snow and cold is keeping everyone inside!  If you have access to a computer on these snow days, consider having your student work on this Ice Art project in Tynker!  It is a great way to practice your coding and problem solving skills!

Back at work and learning Tynker!

It is our first full week back after our break, and we are moving full steam ahead with our coding projects!  Last week, we learned the basics of using Tynker on our tablets, by working through a video as a class, and exploring the different functions of Tynker with our partners.  
We also had an introductory lesson on coordinate planes, and the (x,y) system.  

A few of the students were puzzled as to why we were learning such a "mathy" thing in Digital Literacy!  I thought this was an excellent question, and it gave us a great opportunity to talk about how many of our classroom subjects are related, and sometimes in the early steps of a project, it is hard to understand what each piece of the puzzle means, or why it is important.  As a class, we will be completing three different computer programs using Tynker.  In Tynker, when you place an actor, or character on the coding screen called the stage, it is placed by the coordinates, or (x,y) values.  It is important to learn about this grid system as our codes become more complicated, so that we can figure out how to make our actors move in specific ways on our stage.  

This week, we will be creating a Dodgeball game in Tynker using our tablets.  We will be practicing Pair Programming, which is a technique where programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The two programmers switch roles frequently.  This is great way to learn new programs, and helps new coders catch mistakes, and make corrections quickly.  It is also a great way to learn how to be a great partner.  We will be practicing Pair Programming throughout the rest of the year.