Sunday 26 June 2016

CodeBug at code club




These little devices provide something different to a code. To see the coding interface go to http://www.codebug.org.uk/ (or see figures 1 and 2) and click on create.



Last two weeks
Week 1 
The code clubbers initially shared machines, playing with the CodeBug environment, practice downloading to the bug, writing a routine to scroll their short message. The challenge was then to develop a routine to have a smiley face and a grumpy face scroll across the screen.


Week 2
All have access to the simulation and code generation on codebug.org.uk but this time they don’t have the CodeBug each, they have complete a challenge and run it on the simulation before get a CodeBug to try it. This week's challenge was to get the smiley and grumpy face from week 1 to be selected via the buttons (A and B) - so it involved a loop and conditional statements. Most of them picked it up very quickly.

Two version were built - I reconstructed the ideas in figures 1 and 2 (the code clubbers often did a better version than mine shown here!).

Figure 1: Simple Scroll
The one shown in Figure 1 works by pressing A -scrolls :-) and B - scrolls :-( . Some spotted that the the 'nose' wasn't quite in the place. Some went and found the build sprite block and used that instead.
Figure 2 - Using the build sprite.




Lessons learnt
  • Give them all access individually to the CodeBug website but not to the physical CodeBug straight away
    • They are often a limited resources
    • There is a great temptation from the code clubbers to focus on download to the actual device when the seem to get more done if the spend more time with website and its simulator first;
    • When they have something interesting to put on the ‘bug’; then they can borrow a bug and try it out.
  • They should do a bit of show and tell.

Related posts
Basic Motor Control using CodeBug
messing around with Codebug




All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

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