Week 30 - Project development (last day)

 CLASS OBJECTIVE

Finish the interactive animation you started last class.

ACTIVITY

Once again, gather together as a team to develope the selected project. 

• Don't try to change the project, you won't have time enough to create a new one.
• Instead, try to improve your procedures or add new ones. 
• You have the entire week to finish but, I'd like to supervise your work team in the classroom.
• Don´t forget to work in your document report.

Week 29 - Project development

 CLASS OBJECTIVE

Create the interactive animation to help with the selected problem's resolution. 

ACTIVITY

Gather together as a team to develope the selected project. All of you must think how to use Scratch to create a pedagogical tool to solve this schoolar situation.

• Use the listed examples from the last class to get ideas
• Use the pages on the top of this blog to learn more about Scratch, for example, user interaction.

Don´t forget to open your document report from the last class to fill it. Work as a team.

Week 28 - Final project: Introduction and Planning

CLASS OBJECTIVE

Define the final project and its required components for the summative evaluation by analyzing daily school needs, in order to create an interactive animation that provides solutions to those problems.

INTRODUCTION

This period, you'll be working on a team project: creating an interactive animation. The idea is to combine your creativity, programming skills, and teamwork to create something meaningful and useful.

Today’s session is all about exploring the project objectives, analyzing examples, and thinking about real problems we see at school.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Objective:

The goal of this project is for you and your team to create an interactive story in Scratch that helps solve a problem in your school environment. The problem can be anything that affects students or the school community—like learning math, using the keyboard properly, sorting trash correctly (plastic, organic, etc.), or any other issue you observe and think is important.

Stages:

The project will be developed over three weeks, each one focused on a different stage.
Today is Stage 1, where we will:

• Learn about the project
• Analyze examples
• Choose the problem your team wants to solve

Deliverables:

This session will have a specific task (or deliverable) that must be completed.
For today, your team will:

1. Choose a problem that is present in your school environment. (Name it)
2. Write a hypothesis that describes the problem
3. Include a short justification explaining why is important to help solve this problem.

Team Document

Your teacher will provide a template that your team must use to collect and organize all the evidence and work from each stage of the project.

LETS SEE SOME EXAMPLES OF INTERACTIVE GAMES IN SCRATCH

Here are a few examples of Scratch games that aim to solve real-life problems:

• Learn to multiply
• Math race
• Learn to Touchtype
• Learn about scratch
• Learn math
• Logic games

You can explore these and other gamesor animations on the Scratch website.
Remember: you can look at how these games are programmed, and if you find any game mechanics that could help in your own project, feel free to use or adapt them!

ACTIVITY

1. Form your team based on the number of members your teacher assigns, and sit together.

2. Discuss school problems you’ve noticed—things that make learning or daily life at school harder.

3. Choose one problem your team wants to work on.

4. Use the template provided by your teacher to write:

• Problem to solve:
• Describe what issue or challenge you observed at school.
• Example: First grade students don’t know how to do basic algebraic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division).
• Hypothesis (What do you think causes the problem?):
• We believe that… [who] + [what problem] + because… [possible cause]
• Example: We believe that first grade students don’t know how to do basic algebraic operations because they don’t practice enough or the practice is not interactive.
• Justification (Why is important to solve this matter?):
• Explain why this problem matters.
• Example: Learning basic algebraic operations is the foundation for more advanced math skills and helps students develop logical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

✅ If your team finishes early and still has time, ask the teacher about next stage. You may be allowed to start working on the next part of the project.

Week 27 - Scratch, Block programming

CLASS OBJECTIVE

Introduce block-based programming by creating a Scratch account and exploring its key features, such as sprites, stages, events, controls, motion, sounds, appearances, and more.

INTRODUCTION

BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING

In this course you learned to program using different programming styles, like flowcharts (Raptor) and a didactic programming language (PseInt). Now you'll be introduced to block-based programming.

Block-based programming uses visual blocks instead of writing code with text. These blocks fit together like puzzle pieces, making it easier to understand programming logic without needing to memorize syntax. It is very common in educational environments, such as Scratch, Blockly, or App Inventor, because it helps beginners (especially children and young people) learn the basic concepts of programming.

• Events
• Sequences
• Conditionals
• Loops
• Variables

Each block represents an instruction or control structure, and by dragging and connecting them, the program is built.

Events

In block-based programming, an event is an action or situation that triggers or activates a block of code. In other words, the program starts executing certain instructions when that event occurs.

Movement, Sounds, and Looks

These are essentially the actions that objects will perform when the conditions are met, or when the user decides.

Stage and Objects

Programming in Scratch is often compared to animation, whether pre-programmed or interactive with a user. To achieve this, it is necessary to have a background (stage) and objects (sprite) that perform movements, change appearance, or play sounds.

Control

These are the blocks that manage the flow of the program. They can easily be compared to traditional programming structures such as decision-making and loops, among others.

Variables

As in any programming environment, the need to store data requires the use of variables, which are memory spaces labeled to store information related to the execution of a program.

Operators

Like variables, mathematical, text, and comparison operators are necessary for the execution of programs. With them, we can analyze and compare numerical information required for the execution of a program, even in a graphical environment.

SCRATCH ACCOUNT

Before you can star using Scratch, you have create an account in the next Web Address.

https://scratch.mit.edu/

Once in, follow the next steps:

1. Click on the "Join Scratch" button.
2. Create your user_name using your student number, name and second name. 12345JosePerez
3. Select México from the list.
4. Add your birth month and year.
5. Now your gender
6. Write your school email address. a12345@idec.edu.mx
7. Validate the process by opening your email account

Now, you're ready to start using Scratch. Use the CREATE menú to start programming.

Now, follow your teacher instructions to create your first program.

CLASS NOTES

As usual, write down the class title, the class objective, and answer the following questions:

1. What are the differences between the Raptor, PseInt, and Scratch programming styles?
2. Can you name at least three elements used in Raptor, PseInt, and Scratch?
3. What is completely new to you in Scratch?

Week 26 - Selections and loops, MOD operator

CLASS OBJECTIVE

Reinforce the use of REPETIR and SI_ENTONCES commands by creating a new algorithm in PSeInt, but this time using a flowchart as a visual support. This new algorithm's purpose is to analyze a number to determine whether is a prime number or not.

INTRODUCTION

Today you're going to create a new algorithm to determine prime numbers. You already know the commands and the programming structures, except for the MOD operator, but you'll find it's a very simple mathematic operator related with division.

MOD OPERATOR

You're going to use a new operator, its name is MOD and the symbol that represent it is %. 

In this case, it doesn't mean "percentage", in this case means REMAINDER of a division.

For our practical purpouses, you must know that every time you get zero as a remainder it means you found an exact divisor.

Try the next algorithm in PSeInt:

If you try 42 as dividend and 8 as divisor the remainder will be 2.

If you try 21 as dividend and 7 as divisor the remainder will be 0. It is an exact divisor.

This two numbers might have many exact divisors but, what about prime numbers like 23?

Prime numbers just have two divisors: one and itself.

CLASS ACTIVITY 

• Create a new file in PseInt
• Start naming the algorithm as Números_primos, without spaces, for the algorithm and the file. Remember the difference between the algorithm name and the file name, in which you can use spaces. 
• Now, you're going to use the next flowchart to create the algorithm in PSeInt. Remember, you have to type commands and operators, or you can click on the left and right panels instead to insert then in the algorithm.

After you finish, press the "play" button to test it. Obviously, it must tell you if a given number is prime or not.

Save the file and, before you turn it in,  press the "flowchart" button. Does it look like the image above?

CLASS NOTES

Write down in your notebook the title of the class, the objective and follow the instruction.

• Write down the algorithm code from PSeInt in your notebook and explain, using your own words, what does every code line do, from the first until the last.

Show your answers to your teacher.

Week 25 - Selections and loops practice

CLASS OBJECTIVE

Reinforce the use of the SI ENTONCES and the REPETIR commands by creating algorithms by yourself, just knowing the final result of the program.

INTRODUCTION

Last class you learned the use of SI ENTONCES to create multiple paths in an algorithm. By the analysis of  variables content the procedure can change and produce different outcomes.

Today you'll create by your self a program to analyze a word's length, obviously using SI ENTONCES, and after this you'll adapt the program to be repeated until the user chooses to exit.

Remember, you won't get any help from your teacher.

ACTIVITY 1

Remember, the activity's purpose is that you create the algorithm all by yourself so, you'll receive a just a couple of guidelines.

1. Name the algorithm LONGITUD_DE_TEXTO
2. Declare 1 variable to save a word
3. Ask the user for a word (or phrase) to save it into the variable
4. Tell the user if the word's length has more than 15 characters (tip: you'll also have to use LONGITUD() function)
• Otherwise, tell the user the word is smaller than 15 characters.

Look at the examples:

ACTIVITY 2

Now you have to add a loop to your first algorithm to repeat over and over until the user decides to finish it.

1. Declare another variable to save a text
2. You'll have to add the REPETIR/HASTA QUE command to wrap the last procedure.
3. Inside the loop you'll have to ask the user if he wants to "try with another word", receive his answer and save it to the new variable.
4. The algorithm will continue until the user types some letter different to the "s" letter.

Look at the examples:

If you need one last resource to finish your algorithm, look at the next flowchart:

CLASS NOTES

Write down in your notebook the title of the class, the objective and follow the instruction.

1. What kind of data type you choose to save the user's incoming words? why?
2. What does the LONGITUD() function do?
3. Is it possible to indicate the "different to" comparison symbol instead of "equal to"? How?

Show your answers to your teacher.

Week 24 - Combined Loops and selections

 CLASS OBJECTIVE

Relate PseInt Loops and Selections, from the last class, into some new proyects where we can combine the use of both resources

ACTIVITY 1

Last class we created two algorithms, the fist using "Selections" and the second using a "Loop". Today we'll start with a combined algorithm.

Open PseInt and type the next algorithm. Save the file using the same algorithm's name, into the "Documentos" folder.

Execute the algorithm, test it and personalize it, try to understand it deeply. After this, you'll add comments in every code line explaing what does it do. To do this, use the double slash simbol.

Watch the example in the image below.

Save your file once again and up load it to Classroom.

ACTIVITY 2

Now, this is your turn to create an algorith completely by yourself, in this case, a simple game. Use the paramethers listed below.

• Use the name Guess_number for the algorithm and the file.
• User will have only 4 tries. After the fourth, the program ends.
• The hidden number must be in between 1 and 10 (including them)
• Look at the last algorithm and make the necessary adjustments.

Upload the file to the same Week 24 post in Classroom.

CLASS NOTES

As always, start writting the class title and objective

•     Just draw the game flowchart in your notebook