Hi everyone, today you will hear about my coding experience and what I did in the lesson. Firstly, I was sad because I missed out on 20 minutes of stem due to School Photos, but apart from that… Let’s get on with the coding experiences. I started off this lesson by logging onto Grok Learning and reviewing my ‘Speaking Backwards!’ challenge, which I admired and used for this new challenge… Which I am stuck on (yes, another one). In the lesson I also was looking at a friend’s code which I thought had started of really well. It has been a short lesson, but I will give you ALL the details.

At the start of the lesson, like I said in the introduction, I started by logging onto Grok Learning. The first thing I did was continue on with my ‘Introduction to programming (Python)’ course and went onto the challenge ‘Speaking Backwards!’ After that, I went onto my next challenge called ‘Secret Agent’. I remember giving you an explanation on what it was meant to do, but if you don’t remember, I will give you a brief one now: ‘Secret Agent’ is a python challenge where you type some secret letters into the input and the code prints every third letter (including the first). Unfortunately, I couldn’t work it out and I felt really frustrated but I knew that persisting will get me to where I want to be. I stared off my code by checking the input with the ‘Speaking Backwards!’ challenge and that was correct (YAY!). But then, I got onto the tricky part… the part where the code needed to be different from the ‘Speaking Backwards!’ challenge (uh oh). Okay, what do I do now? To continue my code I deleted the word ‘range’ and added some different number character so the code would print different characters. I kept trying and trying to figure out which character was right to type. Unfortunately I couldn’t work out which character it was so I was doing some trial and error to try and fix the code but I couldn’t work it out. I was soo frustrated! I kept entering the numbers that I thought were right but the code said no.

One thing that I wished I had worked in in the lesson would be coding another level of my game ‘Balloon Spikes’ which I have not shared on scratch yet. I am really working towards this game because this is the first game that I have actually worked towards and I am extremely determined to finish it by the end of this term. I wish I had coded another level because I would know that I could get my game finished well before the end of the term. One thing I have not explained in my blog posts is why I chose the idea of balloons and spikes. Firstly, I chose to make up my own game because I wanted to challenge myself as well as learning more about how to use scratch to I could help other people that are stuck. I chose this game because I thought about how similar my game would be to other worldwide games and what code goes into the most popular games on the global internet. The theme balloons and spikes came from a game that I used to play called ‘Bloons’ in the game you have to try and pop the balloons but I reversed that game where you avoid spikes.

I am really sorry, but that is all for this week… but, I will (hopefully) have an exciting update on how happy I will be when I finish the challenge on Grok Learning ‘Secret Agent’!

 

 

 

 

Thank you and goodbye!

Today’s lessons were a mixture of fun and persisting, but before I start I have an accomplishment on coding… I figured out the ‘Speaking Backwards!’ code challenge!!! I felt really happy that I figured it out. It turns out that I was on the right and wrong track. I figured out that my input was right but I had forgotten the code: for i in range(len(line(-1, -1,-1). This means for each character in typed text’s length line print the character at the back first. I found out this by going back to the information that I was given and putting it forward towards my own code. I also forgot that you didn’t need the name of the input in between the brackets after print. I know that if you are not python coder, that this might sound like a different language, but don’t worry it’s easy to explain, feel free to ask me.

Today I started the lesson by coding level 4 of my game in progress, Ballon Spikes. I spent a third of the lesson coding that, which was simple. I moved the spikes around, made a new coloured ball, set new obstacles and made sprites trigger the start of the next level. I did a lot of duplicating, adding code to the ballon so when the ball touches the purple ball, the sprite ‘Go to Level: 5’ would show. I also added more broadcast messages for the ballon, and the rest of the sprites. I did encounter one problem, when one of the spike sprites were stubborn and didn’t want to change to costume 2, so I did some fiddling around and I found out that my costume for the spike was set to costume 1 not 2, so I fixed that.

Later in the lesson, I logged onto grok learning and I completed the ‘Speaking Backwards!’ challenge which I got soo excited about because I was stuck on it for a week! The next challenge was called ‘Secret Agent’. In this challenge you have to get your code to print every third letter in your sentence. Luckily, since I had experience from the ‘Speaking Backwards!’ challenge, I had a brief idea of what my code would look like and how it was going to function. Unfortunately, I did not finish it, but I am planning to finishing it in the next upcoming lesson. I would really like to know if you are new to coding, are interested in doing it but don’t do it or don’t know about it/not your thing. If you do grok, I would really appreciate your advice and some tips!

During the lesson, I had a look at my friend’s code and what game she was making on scratch. I saw that she completed her maze game and published it on scratch (I played it too) and saw her make a new game where you make your own subway sandwich. I thought that the idea was cool, and I couldn’t wait to play it.

Sorry, but that is all for now! I will have an update on my next lesson next week!

print(‘Bye everyone!’)

 

 

Today’s lesson was full of challenges and problem solving. Today I was helping others while figuring out my own code. First, I started off with scratch and coded my third level of Balloon Spikes (a game in progress), which was mainly easy, I completed it in the first half of the lesson. To code my third level I moved spikes around and fixed their location, as well as make a new coloured ball to end the level. I did have trouble with it at first when the ball refused to show up. I fixed this by changing the code, I did that by changing the broadcast message to ‘show’ so it would show as soon as the next level was started. I also coded the end of the level, so when the button ‘Go to level: 4’ was pressed, the screen would be clean so I could start a new level with the spikes.

After helping others, I went on a more challenging site called Grok Learning, this site teaches blocky coding, micro:bit coding, python coding, HTML coding and CSS, maths computing geometry and an introduction to data bases and more. In the lesson, I worked on the introduction to python which challenged my brain and made me think hard. I started on the complication ‘Speaking Backwards!’ I unfortunately did not finish this question but I am working towards it using my problem solving skills as well as a bit of trial and error. I think next time I might research a bit to see how you do it and work out where I went wrong. While I was working on ‘Speaking Backwards!’ I felt determined to finish it but frustrated that I couldn’t, I went back and forth, working how where I went wrong and how I could use other codes to help me, I was trying to apply what I had knew and put it forward to this code but nothing seemed to work. I am determined and will stay in a growth mindset to help me move forward. I can’t wait to crack this challenging question and find out where I went wrong!

After coding my own algorithms, I thought that I should take a break and help others. I managed to help 2 or 3 people with their code, the first person needed help getting their sprite to move through a maze without touching the black lines. I found that in every process of helping others, you also always learn. We both sat down and did some problem solving until we finally got it, the problem was with the sensing colour block. There were two other people who didn’t know how to undo what they had deleted (on scratch), so I showed them that they had to go to ‘edit’ and then ‘undo delete’. I would like to let you know that if you have a problem I am free for helping even if I don’t know what the problem is, we can still sit down and work it out together.

I would really appreciate your feedback on this comment and any times you got stuck in a challenging coding situation and what you did to resolve it. Thanks for comments!

print(‘Olivia is singing out!’)

 

This term, as we are doing coding, for my goal: I would like to finishing my game in progress on scratch and to continue my course on python on Grok.

I also love challenging myself so I am thinking of learning HTML on Grok and see how I find that!

Hi everyone!

I am really excited to announce that in STEM, we are starting the topic coding! I am really excited for this topic and can’t wait to get right into it. I started to code 2 years ago when I was in year 5 (age 9-10), when our class was introduced to code.org, I didn’t really know anything about coding, but I learned quickly. The next year ( year 6 aged 10-11) I was involved in the Grok coding competition I competed in the blocky and python categories. Later that year, we were introduced to Thomas the NAO robot. We all learned how to code and interact with him. Towards the end of the year, I went back to Grok and did the microbit challenge and then took a break from coding. This year I am re-familiarising with the world of code as I am starting to code once again.

This week was our first lesson and we were asked to reflect on our capability to code, there were four categories that we had to sort ourselves into and they were: Novices, apprentices, practitioners and academics/experts. At first I didn’t quite know where to put myself as I thought I was in between a practitioner and an academic/expert. I didn’t know what to expect from both those groups but I thought just incase the academic/expert category was too advanced I went to the practitioner category. We then recorded keywords on our group whiteboard, our words were similar to blocky, code, choreograph and language. After, we were given time to look at the other whiteboards, I went to the academic/expert board to have a look at what was on there and I felt confused as there were not many keywords.

After, we were showed a video of some successful people that had created/designed apps, websites and games. Some of them had started learning learning code at university and some, from a young age. The video was inspiring and encouraged me to work hard and accomplish new things.

Until next time

print(‘Olivia is signing out’)