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May 18, 2014

Programming (4): Go find (sharing), using repeat

Go Find (and sharing): After a focused class of doing something concrete it was time to explore again. I asked the children to try to figure out 10 things they had not tried out so far among Motion, Looks, Events and Control.

We then had a sharing session. I started with the youngest children to gather their inputs and then moved to the older children. Some of the children also interpreted this as find any 10 things so the session also moved a little bit to other aspects like sound. I gave an example of each of the things the children had found. One of the things was saying things where I created a conversation between two people. This really caught the fancy of the 5th graders where they could make scripts and stories with people talking. Here is one that a child made in time that involves conversation (though its impossible, as its under water :))


Using repeat: At some point someone brought up (what I was waiting for) repeat. I showed the same and talked about how they could now simplify what they had done before.

The 7th graders were quick to pick it up and modify their script, though they had to debug some and I pushed up their challenge. Can you make a pendulum that like a real pendulum decays in time. This was an interesting discussion including impossibility and a really long script. We talked about what algebra means and what it means to have a variable. Here is the decaying pendulum that one of them made that decays (80%) amplitude each oscillation.



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