Getting Jiggy with Digiforms

Students were busy this week as they transitioned between three projects. First they wrapped up their Scratch presentations which they worked on for over almost two weeks. Visit last weeks post to see the new additions. This unit covered many things, research, citing sources, file management and wrapped up with awesome Scratch stories. Next they worked on establishing classroom rules and procedures. They are the experts after all. They know what is needed for a positive engaging classroom environment. Now they are building a Digiform avatar masterpiece while they learn some lesser known Google Slides, or Google Docs, features. Check the YouTube playlist to learn more. 

Their avatars, will become characters in an upcoming comic project where the fifth graders reflect more on our Classroom Constitution, which is still in the works. The sixth grade students will use their avatars with Scratch projects. They will have the option to build character costume changes for their Sprites, if they choose, and have the time to do so. 

Hybrid students will continue working on these creations in remote classes next week while remote students will work asynchronously using the video tutorials posted here. This isn't a typical week as we have parent conferences after school and the hybrid students will be remote. 

If you want to see some examples or peruse the video tutorials to learn more about the tools they will utilize, give it a try. Simply click the head to learn how to make a head and ears for your Digiform avatar or to learn more about arranging the objects (layers) so that these objects are stacked the way they should be. Need help with boots, or interested about the polyline tool, click the boots. How about a quick review on making eyes, click one of the eyes. Click the possibilities to see some examples of how you can use your Digiforms for other projects. For a direct link to the playlist for all of the parts, click the computer. Have fun finding the clickable ghost links to learn more. 

      

Have a safe and happy break! See you next year. 

Scratch Name Project Q2

We are wrapping up our name research Scratch project. Students are learning how to save, rename and access files in Scratch, conduct research and cite their sources. What a learning curve for some of them. They are so used to files saving automatically that this can be a bit of a struggle at first. Luckily are getting lots of practice with this project. 

Here is the first round of projects that were captured while students practiced screen sharing with Zoom to show off their masterpieces. We will finish up classroom presentations next week. So check back for the second round of videos.

Students researched names, some chose their own, others the names of their favorite actor, scientist, YouTuber, etc. Yup, it says YouTuber. They seemed to enjoy learning about the origins of their names, their popularity, and other interesting facts like, "one who makes wagons" or "he who has a crooked nose." They really enjoyed viewing each others projects and garnering new ideas to explore in Scratch. The research and file organization, that will take some time. It isn't as exciting as coding in Scratch but it is necessary and will help them in other classes. 

The criteria for sharing their work:

1. I needed their permission.
2. I will only share projects using a first name only, unless it was a famous or historical figure.

Check out their amazing work below.

On Wednesday we celebrated National CS Education Week and the birthdays of Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace. It isn't a coincidence. National CS Education Week always falls during the week of Grade Hoppers birthday, December 9. 

Students chose an activity of interest to explore from the Hour of Code website. When they were done, they shared about the experience with a Google Form exit ticket. 

Research, and Videos, and Scratch, Oh My

This week students completed research and took notes about their name or a name of their own choosing like Sybil Ludington. Really now, that was my name of choice but those who chose names other than their own did come up with some interesting options. We also practiced searching for and saving images using both the right click "save image as" or with hot key shortcuts to take screenshot of interactive graphs. Of course either method requires citing your sources which we also reviewed. 

Another element of this project is practicing file management and organization. Although I love tools like Google Classroom as learning management systems can help to keep our work organized and us to connect on each specific assignment, but most of the work happens in the background so the students have no need to think about how it works. With the final portion of this project, coding a Scratch project, students have to download, rename and then upload their file to Google Classroom. Whenever they need to save their changes, they complete this process changing the file name to reflect the new "version." that they have saved, just like updates to apps on phones. It was great to see them make this connection as they repeat and practice this step. 

Take a peek at the steps of the project and what we are doing here. 

Watch the corresponding how to videos on my YouTube playlist.

We hope to share these projects next week. They will use the design process to write and debug their code over the next few days. Stay tuned.