CS First: Code your own Google logo

Google's CS First program has introduced countless numbers of learners to coding and computer science through Scratch.

One of CS First's newest offerings is a module that teaches you and your students how to "Create Your Own Google Logo" like the Google Doodles that change daily on Google's search page.

The module starts with a plain Google logo and then takes you through a number of ways to modify it and make it more interactive, just like the daily doodles do.

All of the coding is done in the Scratch editor and if students have accounts, the projects can all be saved and modified later.

According to Google, the project should take about 30-60 minutes. This is highly dependent upon the user's previous experience in Scratch though. 

The activities are a great way to use the CS First resources without committing to the full curriculum.

Middle Schoolers Review Oregon Trail...And...It...Is...Awesome!

Here is a great game review of the original Oregon Trail that many of us Gen-Xers played on the Apple II. It comes from a pair of students in the game design program at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, NJ.

The reviewers take viewers through the interface, game controllers, and game play. For being just in middle school, credit goes to the reviewers for not spending any time on just ripping the game to shreds. In fact these guys are actually pretty complimentary.

"A big part of the game is that it is really realistic," one of them states in the opening overview. "Everyone in your party could actually die."

One great part comes when playing the game, the students are notified of a family member dying of typhoid. "We'll just continue like we know what that is," one remarks.

The part that does my heart the best though is the reviewers enthusiastically showing the audience how to hunt for food. It's great to see that 35 years  and generations of players later, it's still a favorite part of the game.

Great work guys! I really enjoyed it.

Connect Agriculture and STEM Through Coding

In our third grade STEM classes at Hamilton Community Schools we spend a lot of time investigating the science and technology of farming. Hamilton straddles Allegan and Ottawa Counties in Michigan, the two top ag producing counties in the state. All of our students are either involved in farming or know other families who are. In STEM we show them how being successful as farmers takes high levels of scientific knowledge, technical skills, and an increasing level of innovation. Even though we live right in the middle of the "farm belt", every kid across America needs an understanding of how and where our food is produced. Whether you're in Hamilton, Michigan or Brooklyn this unit can deepen understanding and open minds to all that is involved with feeding a nation.

Here is a progression of activities I do to build these skills with a heavy focus on engineering and computer science.

Open Their Eyes: Most of our kids have seen the big pieces of machinery out in the fields plowing and harvesting but only a few have actually had the chance to get up close. YouTube provides a bunch of great videos that take kids inside the machinery and highlight technical advances.

•Farmers Reap the Benefit of Driverless Tractor Tech - CBS This Morning
•John Deere: Improving Farm Efficiency with Technology
•2016 John Deere Combine Features Video

These videos are great for showing kids what is already in use and can spark the innovative imagination as we move forward by asking them to design the farm equipment of the future.

For an overall look into the real lives of a variety of different types of farmers, nothing beats DiscoveringFarmland.com from the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. Lesson plans, digital interactive games, and clips from the documentary Farmland highlight what is available.

Practice: The American Farm Bureau offers a great set of farming-based games and their Equipment Engineer game fits perfectly into this unit. Learners travel around the world and are given agricultural scenarios where they pick the best equipment for the job. Through the game, they are gaining knowledge of the way different pieces can be used as well as how farm equipment solves a wide range of challenges.

Get Designing: This is also a great spot to introduce the Design Process and for kids the PBS series "Design Squad" provides lots of resources like cool graphics and the "Kid Engineer" videos are super helpful, especially the Bike Trailer one.  

For creating designs we use Apple's Keynote on our iPads. There is a lot that can be done with the app besides making slideshows. Kids use their imagination to start designing what could be possible in futuristic farm equipment. This is a great activity for detailing designs and the really great Keynote users even are able to animate their designs. Video of our students designing.

[caption id="attachment_1573" align="alignleft" width="300"] Students use Keynote on the iPad to design farm equipment.[/caption]

Building for Function: It is one thing to dream up the future but it is a big task to actually build something functional, even if it is a model made of Legos. This can be a difficult hurdle for kids to clear because for most of them all of their use of Legos has been  purely imaginary. We spend time building vehicles with Legos that must be powered by a robotic Sphero. Here is where young engineers get really good at analyzing flaws and making tweaks as part of the design process. We start off building vehicles that can move straight ahead as just accomplishing that can be a task. Eventually students get to where the vehicles can actually maneuver around the playground.

[caption id="attachment_1574" align="alignleft" width="425"] Students engineer a Lego vehicle powered by a Sphero.[/caption]

Bring in the Computational Thinking:  The great thing about Spheros is that their movement can be controlled down to a fraction of a second by the Tickle app. By using a block programming, kids sort and build out a list of commands for the Sphero to perform. When we first start with the Lego vehicles, we simply tell the device to go as fast as it can in one direction. We ramp the coding up greatly when we start to simulate jobs machinery would perform on the farm.

Students are given a small plot of ground on the playground (or in the gym depending on weather) and have to program the Sphero to "plow" or "harvest" the field. Below is some sample starter code that students might assemble for their Sphero.

[caption id="attachment_1575" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Block coding in the Tickle app used to control robotic Spheros[/caption]

Not only are there tremendous calculations our third graders are making like angles, velocity, and time, but there is a deeper benefit in the way they must think logically to make something real actually happen. They create loops of commands and must algebraically figure a number of variables.

Last year was my first year as a STEM teacher after having taught 16 years in a technology-only classroom. By far the greatest reward was seeing students grab a sense of power over their world when they were able to program an app to make something real happen. It is one thing to program something on a screen, but when they can send a robotic sphere all of the way to the office from their classroom, they become real "do-ers" full of confidence to tackle real tasks.

Putting it All Together: This unit starts with gaining understanding and then progresses to imagining and eventually building and controlling. It takes time and patience and not all kids will progress at the same rate and some may not even finish it...and that is okay. Those who progress really quickly can be given extra challenges. I am planning on giving my "high flyers" a kite, a 3D printing pen and a GoPro and ask them to create a tool a farmer could use to survey crops. We will spend six weeks (meeting once a week for an hour) on this project this year but no matter where individuals are on our last session, we will dedicate a major chunk of time to discussing how the innovation we simulated helps preserve resources and promotes sustainability.

Evaluations and Reflections: Our STEM classes focus heavily on the Next Gen Science Engineering Standards. We are constantly monitoring how individuals are progressing through:

•Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

•Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

•Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.

We also write, sketch, and reflect daily in STEM journals that students use from kindergarten through fourth grade. We talk about how STEM time is different than any other time at school. We are not just doing school, we are together designers, engineers, and scientists and journals and sketchbooks are tools these people use to do their jobs.



As we continue to develop our STEM classes we are discovering the power in tying STEM concepts like design and coding with real-life challenges rooted in our community. Someday we hope that our current students will not only graduate and do great things...but will do those great things right here in Hamilton.

Follow our Hamilton STEM adventures at TinyUrl.com/HawkSTEM
Catch us on Twitter and Instagram as @htownstem

Hamilton Codes with Swift Playgrounds

Fourth Graders are the perfect age for learning to code. Apple's Swift Playgrounds combines fun challenges that build upon each other to increase student skills. It's fun and engaging and builds many other thinking skills.

Apple also provides great teaching materials in its Swift iTunes U courses.

Use Swift Playgrounds Resources with any Coding Program

Apple's  Swift Playgrounds app and their "Everyone Can Code" initiative is a great program for learning the coding language that powers iOS apps. Not only is there a puzzle-based app an immersive learning experience, there are numerous teacher resources in both iBooks and iTunes U. For iBooks there are three teacher guides: Level 1 and 2, Level 3, and App Development.

Now, the Swift Playgrounds program might not be a fit for every classroom because it has to be done on an iPad running iOS 10 and be one of the following generations:  iPad Air, iPad mini 2 or newer, or any size iPad Pro. I work out of four elementary schools and only one has iPads that can run the app.

Even though I use other others like studio.code.org and Google CS-First in my other buildings, there are still a lot of great resources that Apple offers that I use as demonstration even when our activities are Scratch-based. Fellow Apple Distinguished Educator Gabriella Meyers hosts a number of videos within the iTunes U course that explain concepts like algorithms and functions but don't reference Swift specifically. I have found them to be great, concise explanations my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders really understand. Sometime you just need someone else to explain it.

So, it doesn't matter what coding instructions you are using. Take a look inside of what Apple offers for Swift Playgrounds. You might find a lot that is useful.

[caption id="attachment_1428" align="aligncenter" width="452"] Apple Distinguished Educator Gabriella Meyers explains functions in an iTunes U course.[/caption]