Geometry Dash - our second Hopscotch project

The earlier school closure time for the end of Term 3, meant that we did not have Lesson 6 on Friday ... which in term meant that we would miss our Coding for Numeracy lesson. This realisation caused great consternation for the students ... so the deal was made that, if they completed all of their numeracy work without complaint, we just might spend some of Thursday's double lesson coding.

Hence, our adventures using Hopscotch continued on the Thursday, this week, with students creating a simple iPad game called Geometry Dash.

This project is the second lesson in the Hopscotch for Kids series of You Tube videos ...

The students got straight down to the business of coding, following the instructions and learned more about debugging and a new concept: concurrency (two or more things happening at the same time).

The ability to have concurrent events occurring, for different characters ...

... which meant there were many more command blocks required.








They learned about nesting instructions in loops ...

... that are conditional ...

... or that repeat forever!








A few of the boys were absent this week, which changed the dynamics in the classroom considerably. However, it had no affect on the degree of collaboration and support among those present, as can be seen in the photo below.

In the end, all bar one student successfully created the Geometry Dash game, on their iPads, in about 45 minutes. Another successful lesson in coding.

I have challenged them to keep exploring Hopscotch during the school holidays ... and hinted that our next project might involve creating an adventure game.

"Good morning" projects ... A great success!

Sadly, none of the students took the time to watch the video posted in last week's blog post: Your First Hopscotch Project (see previous post). However, every cloud has a silver lining ... and watching the video in class was ours!

Before going any further, I'd like to encourage you to explore the great selection of video tutorials available on You Tube, particularly those in the Hopscotch: Programming for Kids collection. The video I am referring to is from this collection and is presented by Dr Em ... read more about Dr. Em and her colleagues on the gethopscotch site.

Now ... back to Friday's lesson. We started by watching the video tutorial by Dr. Em, all the way through. Then we began reconstructing the tutorial, one step at a time. We quickly discovered that our current version of Hopscotch is different from the one used in the tutorial. Specifically, some of the terminology has changed in terms of the building blocks used in the App. This actually proved to be a good thing because it involved the students in problem-solving right from the start. Let me share the project using screen shots ...

Dr. Em explained the screen size and x,y coordinates (an excellent maths connection ... cartesian coordinates!) and took us through a step-by-step process of drawing a line across the screen, that started out thin and ended up filling the entire screen and creating our sky.

How did we do this? We started by selecting a character and then creating a rule.


We used commands from the drawing blocks...

... and from the movement blocks...

... plus we learned about grouping commands together ...

and voila ... the finished product!

The students were all completely focussed on achieving the task ... and persisted until they had every step completed, including the title ... even past 3:15pm (home time) on a Friday afternoon!

Next week is the last week of the school term, so we might attempt a more difficult tutorial and see if we can learn some more about the building blocks of good coding.

Onwards to Hopscotch

This week we started by revisiting the way students solved the fifth challenge step using Scratch Jnr ... and, in particular, the number of steps required by most to solve the problem. We talked specifically about the looping function and how that might be used to make the programming steps both neater to read and more efficient. On that note, we headed on into the world of Hopscotch.

In the PC Magazine review, published in June 2014, the author explains that Hopscotch teaches kids how to program using open-ended tools that allow them to think like programmers without understanding the syntax of the process.

We started by playing with some basic steps to develop our understanding of how the blocks are used to manipulate a character.

Our first step (rule) was to select the character Jodi and make her grow by 110% when tapped.

Next, we made her change her pose when the iPad was tapped.

Our last step (rule) made her shrink every time the iPad detected a loud noise. This was the one that caused the most excitement and laughter, as Jodi shrank so much she disappeared from some  iPads.

This is Jodi after she'd grown and changed her pose by moving her arms.

Whilst some of the students were quick to make the connection with what they'd learned about blocks last week, using Scratch Jnr, others needed help from their peers to create the rules in Hopscotch.



Next week we will explore Hopscotch further. In the meantime, students are encouraged to watch the You Tube video "Your First Hopscotch Project", one of a series of videos posted by Hopscotch Programming for Kids.

This will be our starting point for the next stage of our coding journey.

Scratch Jnr ... a 5-step challenge

This week, students learned about solving challenges, one step at a time. 

Last week's free play gave the students time to explore the blocks, backgrounds and editing tools in the App. The object of the session today was to develop a better understanding of the coding blocks available in Scratch Jnr. Students were provided the following challenges, one step at a time:

• Create a new project using the Earth and Moon background.
• Place your cat sprite in the bottom left-hand corner.
• Move your cat to the Earth, as quickly as you can. Name your project "first name_Step1" and Share it with me via email.
• Starting with your cat in the same spot, move him across to the right fast and then up to the Earth slowly. Name your project "first name_Step2" and Share it with me via email.
• Now repeat the previous step, but make him say something in a speech bubble when he arrives on Earth. Name your project "first name_Step3" and Share it with me via email.
• Repeat Step 2 again, but this time have him say something appropriate, using your voice. Name your project "first name_Step4" and Share it with me via email.
• Now the challenge ... can you get your cat from the Moon to Earth as quickly as you can on the diagonal? Is this possible? It might not be. See what you can do to solve this challenge. Name your project "first name_Step6" and Share it with me via email.

This set of challenges came from a Google Doc I found on the web. 

Sinead was quick to discover how easy it was to achieve the first step ... using the least number of coding blocks.

Karl solved step 2 by adding the "run" and "walk" blocks to guide the speed of his cat.

Jarred added one more coding block to add his speech bubble.

Oliver used the microphone block to add his voice to the cat.

Getting the cat to the Earth, on the diagonal, proved to be very challenging. Eleni found that repeating 2 steps across and 1 step up got the cat where she wanted him. 

Unfortunately, no-one found the repeating loop option ... but this is something we can explore next week.

The students were certainly engaged in the process of problem-solving. They were also very happy to work collaboratively and to help each other out. Towards the end of the lesson a colleague visited the classroom and the students were very happy to share their projects with her. She was most impressed with what they could do.

The students have been asked to download the Hopscotch App for the next stage of our learning journey.