Sunday, March 2, 2014

Scratching

A number of lessons learned while guiding B through her scratch project:

  • Online Scratch is OK but SLOW - installed app is much better
  • Need to set all positions, sizes & show/hide at Start - similar to "Void Setup" in Arduino
  • Good troubleshooting techniques & tips: try small portions of the code at a time to isolate issues
  • Interesting interplay between multiple scripts (eg. one has to "wait" while another operates, or "wait until..."
  • Lots of conditional loops (If statements)
  • I hadn't used operators and variables extensively before. Great features!
  • Introducing a 7-year old to variables is not as challenging as I expected...
  • Working in increments of 30-45 minutes, this was a long process. In the end I took her draft and "finished it" in order to post


In terms of working with a young mind, the perpetual challenge (in this and other projects) is trying to help reconcile their creative ideas with "reality" (eg. the parameters of code) and/or to translate what they want to happen into the available commands. Things do not always "work" they way they want them to, so this is a continuous trial and error process. Of course, another challenge is trying NOT to jump in and "do it for them!"


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