Week 7¶

Assignments¶

[ ] Task 1: Create a game or quiz using block coding.

Process¶

I decided to create a simple game that contains the basics of block coding for beginner students.
I did by creating four sprites: a car, a play button, a racetrack and a trophy.
I also had four backdrops: the start menu, the play screen, a winner screen and a you lose screen. The play button was showing in all but the play screen, while the rest of the elements were shown only in the play screen.
The rest of the code was simple. The play button sends you to the play screen, and then the car follows the mouse. If the car stops touching the racetrack you get the You Lose screen, but if it gets to the Trophy you get the You Win screen.
Some of the most common Scratch errors are tackled here too. I had to make most of the code for the car wait before running, since Scratch loads it before the racetrack, triggering the You Lose condition before you even start. I had to add extra conditions to the You Lose, since if you are touching the trophy you are not touching the racetrack according to Scratch’s internal logic. Finally, I had to make the car go back to the start position everytime you go back to the play screen.
Here is the code for the four sprite and the backdrops, as well as a video of the game running:

Reflection¶

-When you design a DF learning activity, how do you take into account diversity? Could you describe one learning situation in which you did not take into account diversity in planning? How did you solve the situation? I try to make it accessible to different levels of experience. A good example is this same game. You can elevate it by adding more rules as well as making it simpler by skipping some of the polishing, all in the same class. It has happened to me before that I fail to correctly gauge the experience level of the students, but I’ve been able to adapt the lesson by introducing new materials or challenges. -What aspects would you need to take into consideration if you have kids with a) learning disabilities, b) physical disabilities, c) emotional disabilities when preparing your DF activities? I’d have to adapt the environment as well as the activities in those cases. Changing challenges for an exploration has worked for me in the past. -Do you think your school is ready to a change in mindset? Why? How can you get support from other stakeholders? Since we are a private organization we are constantly evolving and changing our mindset! We adapt depending on the groups we have at the moment. -What are the challenges and opportunities of integrating programming in your classes? Both literacy and problem-solving have been in a level in our students in which even block programming has been hard for them to grasp. I’ve had to go to physical computing and that has helped the understanding of the logic.

Tools¶

Computer