Digital Music Boxes: Random Music Or Simple Synthesizers Using Scratch

Last term we worked with our phase three students to Design and Make computer games using Scratch.  One of the Focussed Practical tasks I used emerged from a music session I taught with some of our younger students exploring pitch and composing musical phrases using the pentatonic scale. 

I knew that Scratch could be used to create music, and had used the pentatonic scale during impovisation and composition activities with students in my primary classes to great effect.  I wondered how it would pan out if I involved my Phase 3 students in programming a simple random music generator.

To begin two sprites were created.

• A Musical Note: that was programmed to bounce around the screen randomlyish!
• The second a musician sprite programmed as above but also to play a single musical note from the chosen scale, when it touched the note.

The Musical Note.
This was created using the paint a new sprite tool, and in my case looked like this.

Behind the musical note sprite I added the following pair of scripts.








When we set up the task the "when green flag is clicked" header block was was added from the control block to both scripts.  However before running the program the header block from one of the scripts was removed.

The first script, Script one in the image, allows some user control, with the musical note following the mouse pointer, in effect allowing the user to play notes in the order they choose.  A simple musical instrument or synthesiser.

The second script in the image. Script two has a very different effect setting the note moving under its own steam, when the gren flag is clicked, playing any note it comes into contact with in the order it meets it...  But not quite yet, as we don't have any musician sprites.


Musician Sprites
The first musician sprite and its scripts were created by choosing a character through the "insert sprite from file" option. and then adding the following script.  The musical elements of this coming in the form of elements from the "sound" blocks.

Completing My Digital Musical Box
So far I have one musical note and one musician.  I need 5 musicians and each need to be tuned to play one note from the pentatonic scale.  To achieve this I created 4 duplicates of my first musician sprite, by right clicking and selecting duplicate from the menu.

Next I changed the Sound script elements of each sprite.  I kept the instrument and duration or beat the same in each case but changed the note value, and renamed the sprite accordingly so

Musician Sprite 1 was renamed playc        Plays note number 60
Musician Sprite 2 was renamed playd        Plays note number 62
Musician Sprite 3 was renamed playe        Plays note number 64

Musician Sprite 4 was renamed playg        Plays note number 67
Musician Sprite 5 was renamed playa        Plays note number 69

Each Musician Sprite was also given a change of costume to uniquely identify them onscreen

Now on pressing the green flag each of the musician sprites begin moving randomlyish around the screen, as does the musical note.  Each time a musician meets the note it contributes its sound to the tune.

I have to say at this point each individual student loved this a lot more than those around them.  With the programming in place, I found now that the learning began through play and creativity.  The students extended this task for themselves, experimenting and asking what would happen if they

• added more musical notes?
• changed the speed of the sprites?
• Altered the instruments being played?

What I like about this activity is that from very simple programing we have two possible outcomes.

1. The random music generator
2. A very simple synthesiser

The random music generator, digital windchime or music box, allowed the students space to experiment and explore the effects of editing scripts on output.  The Synthesiser option provided a possible extension opportunity, where using static musician sprites and mouse control they could create a simple game or activity to help younger students create music, with additional outcomes being possible use of graphical scoring.  I intend to use this activity again myself perhaps as part of our moving on moving up week with new intake students, or in involving our students in preparing sessions to work with younger students on the campus.  I would be interested to hear from anyone who tries out this task with students and what they made of it too. :o)

Making and Playing Computer Games With Scratch: Episode 2 A keepy Uppy Paddle and Ball Game

In the last post we were left with a cliffhanger. We had used a series of given scripts to take our sprite for a walk and used imported, downloaded or self created backgrounds to provide a context or place for this to take place.  Some of the students had also experimented within scenes, changing sprites or adding additional characters and objects.  The questions being raised as we worked reflected how the students wanted something different to happen when their sprites met, we weren't quite sure what but we knew that when characters and objects meet or "touch in a "real" computer game something usually happens.

This week we began again with an empty stage, and a session outcome to develop or create a small scale project where one object (or Sprite) within the environment would be programmed to interact with others.  Building on student queries, I thought it would be a nice idea to build a simple game.  I decided to borrow from a Phase 3 task and to build a version of the arcade game "breakout," but that I would limit the outcome to using only the paddle and ball sections of the game building a  "keepy uppy game."  Keeping the idea as simple as possible I hoped would allow me to build on student excitement from the previous session, and allow discussion of events and outcomes as procedures were added to the game.

With the world cup coming up there may be some interest in this fairly straight forward set of scripts, and the editing and extension possibilities they afford for adaptation of the initial idea.  Theming the game from its origins into something soccer like, using existing scripts as the basis, and including a spoonful or two of creative playfulness by the students could make for some wonderful ideas.  This however is an extension idea to come back to at the end of this post.  Needless to say the game of "keepy uppy" is one of those things we probably use as teachers a lot in skills practice during PE, or have played as children ourselves in the garden, with a tennis racket and ball or a football.   What I think students will enjoy about this as a creative starting point is that essentially it uses two sprites and a background.  Both sprites are fairly simple in their purpose, while changes and careful choice of background gives us a visual backstory or context for our game.

To introduce the session I began at the end...  modelling through a prepared design what we would be looking for if we were successful in making our game.  The students were asked if their game needed to look like this in order for it to be a successful design?  There are many games that work in similar ways but that look very different.  What could we change before we begin creating and building the code?

The stage I used contained a star field, a rectangular space ship for a bat and an asteroidish type ball.  Pressing the green flag set the asteroid in motion, while moving the mouse dragged the bat back and forth across the bottom of the stage (the x axis of movement).  When the asteroid hit the bat it bounced off until it hit the upper sides or top edge of the stage when it bounced and changed direction.  If we missed the asteroid and it made contact with the bottom of the screen then the game stopped running and was over.  This process was described to the students in pretty much this way as the model was demonstrated.  Why?  As well as following instructions I want the students to be able to see and begin evaluating step by step what was intended to happen as the program runs. Describing the intended actions in this way, I hoped would encourage the students to begin reasoning aloud and visualising what the code blocks they would later be building were intended to do.  In turn helping us to focus on particular blocks and what might be happening if the project did not work as expected.   

The students were asked where else the game could take place?

• In a cave
• in the snow
• on the moon
• outer space
• under the sea
• in the kitchen
• In the classroom

were among suggestions made.

What might be falling/moving or flying in these spaces?

• fish
• meteorites
• planets
• bowls or cups
• food
• snowballs

What might be used to hit, catch, bounce or keep up these objects

• pans
• polar bears
• spaceships
• hands

The students had some really interesting ideas, many possible "right" answers, but to begin the activity, and inorder to ensure our code blocks did as intended I added the initial design stage proviso, that the part of the bat that meets the ball must be flat. The reason for this being that during the opening part of the software based activity I wanted the students to edit and alter the sprites that they chose to use.

The students began with their stage and the game background,

• either importing a background from collection that matched the idea they had
• searching for a background on the web they could download, import and use to set the scene for the game.
• or creating a background of their own

To the lower edge of the background a coloured line was added from one side to the other.  The reason for which will become clear later.

The students then deleted the default sprite to create their "ball."  This was imported from the collection and edited to work with and be in keeping with their background and so the game's backstory

Finally the students created or added a new sprite that would be their bat.   This was

• either a sprite from collection edited to include a flat surface
• or a new sprite painted from scratch and designed to fit with the backstory.

With the background added and sprites created we were ready to code our game.  The students were provided with support sheets, to guide them through the addition of code blocks to control the ball and bat sprites.  We began with the bat or paddle.  This object needed simply to be able to move across the screen from left to right, following the motion of the mouse.  This was achieved by clicking on our bat/paddle sprite, then the script tab and dragging the following code blocks into the space.

The students were then encouraged to test the procedure, clicking the green flag header block, and observing the onscreen effect, and sharing their ideas about what was happening with each other.

With the bat/paddle/ working correctly we moved on to add scripts to the "ball" sprite, using the following script blocks.

I have included comments in this image, the yellow caption blocks, to demonstrate a feature of Scratch shown to me by one of the students this week. I didn't realise this function was available, but right clicking in the script area reveals a context menu, from which a comment block can be added, and descriptions of a code block or procedure and its function added. Dragging the comment to a particular section of the code visually links it. Thanks to J, this tool has now been added to my session plans for phase 3 next week, when students will be asked to create screen shots of their game projects and to annotate them to support our APP process. Loving this...never too old to learn something new.

The challenge in creating these procedures lies in the fact that some code blocks, require combining blocks from different areas eg using a control block with a sensing block, to create the forever if touching shuttle command, or combining a motion block with an operator to construct the point in direction or turn clockwise something degrees command.

The students were really excited about the outcomes, and enjoyed playing each other's games and adding the score variable made a real difference to the feel of what they had created.

The possible extension I mentioned earlier relates to the Soccer World Cup coming up in South Africa.  It could be fun with the scripting now done to import photographs of players to scratch and then edit these to include as the "bat" sprite.  How many times can "Rooney" keep up the ball.  Perhaps the head only of the character could be added to a painted sprite with feet and head, allowing use of both to be used in the game?  What might a keepy up game look like if it were an animal or intergalactic cup?  What might be used for a ball? What if our favourite players were practicing in the kitchen or our school classroom before a match? What might they use to play keepy uppy with.

Hope this is useful.  Have fun.  If you use this with your students or any other creative ideas inspire you around this post please share these through comments.  Thank you for reading.

Making and Playing Computer Games With Scratch Episode 1

A while back I found myself downloading and playing with scratch, considering it as a possible tool to complement work I was already doing with Phase 2 students around Shape and Space and LOGO.  With a move to work with Phase 3 students I have been "encouraged" into the slightly steeper learning curve of using Scratch as a programming platform in its wider sense, resulting this term in a series of sessions exploring arcade games and working with students to use the tool as a basis for designing, making and evaluating one or two of our own.  I have decided however, as an offshoot of this and to support my personal professional learning to use some of the materials from Phase 3 sessions with my phase 2 ICT club as well, and to see how they got on.  Our first session worked really well, and I was impressed at how creative some of the younger students were with the basic scripts in hand.

The first Session involved students familiarising themselves with the layout of the tool's interface.  Following given instructions and scripts to bring about increasingly complex animation effects. Within the session students used the default "sprite" initially and blocks from the control, motion and looks scripts areas only to bring about 3 different types of animation.

• Activity one bringing about movement as a flip in position using an on mouse click event.
• Activity two bringing about continuous movement of the sprite from one side of the stage to another, with an image swap to add interest to the sprite's actions and a change of direction when it reached the edge of the screen.
• Activity 3 using four separate scripts, that on click or use of a keystroke would allow user control of the sprite to move it around the stage using the up, down, left and right keys on the keyboard.

 Within the session the following scripts were were provided for students to use.

Activity 1

As the students worked with the above script they discovered that the sprite didn't simply flip, but rather rotated as it changed direction.  The students were encouraged therefore to explore what would happen if... they changed the settings of the motion buttons highlighted in the image above.  Could they

• make the sprite mirror as it turned
• stand on its head 
• step forward and back?

Activity 2

Running this script, the sprite walks back and forward across the stage when the green flag is clicked, its moevement repeated because of the forever loop until the red stop button is pressed.  Again in running this script students were asked to explore the effects of changing the position of the motion buttons, but in addition to explore what would happen if we altered some of the variables in the motion blocks.

• Could we slow down the sprite?  
• Could we speed it up?  
• Could we make the sprite's speed vary so during some parts of the routine the sprite seemed to be moving faster than at others?  
• How did our changes effect the way he/she looked as they moved?  

What would happen if...

we changed the green flag header block for the

"when [something] key pressed,"

or "when sprite clicked"

header blocks.



Activity 3

Here students were encouraged to recreate a script that would enable them to control the sprite using the arrow keys, so that for example when the right arrow key is pressed and held down the sprite walks towards the right side of the stage. This example with the addition of a cap block will bring about movement towards the bottom of the stage by the sprite when the down arrow key is pressed.

Having completed one of the scripts the students were shown how to duplicate it and then how to edit the values according to given models values in the images below.  The addition of green flag caps to the procedures, meant that on clicking the green flag the program would run, allowing the students to control the sprite's movement across the stage in the up. down, left and right directions.  In effect they could take the sprite for a walk.

These were then tested to ensure that they worked, and then further edited if need be to correct them.


To engage the students in evaluating this Focussed Practical Task, they were asked...  If we were making a computer game of our own...
How might this set of procedures be useful
Where might we use them, and what might be happening in our game?
Following discussion several familiar gaming type scenarios arose

• Perhaps we might want to move our character around a room, perhaps colecting things.
• Perhaps we might want to move our character around a maze.

What seemed to excite the students most however was that they now had a working model that they could explore and play with, and this lead to our extension activity... 


Extension


Having copied the scripts and set a scene where the sprite could be moved with the keyboard the students now wanted to play with what they had done..

• Could they change the sprite or character they were animating?
• Could they set a scene for the character or sprites actions to happen in?

With the model in place the students 

• explored importing new sprites to replace the cat. 
• investigating how they could get their new sprite to follow the instructions they created for the cat.
• Adding an extra sprite and having it move using one of our earlier scripts at the same time as the original sprite.
• Editing, recolouring and changing the sprites they had imported.
• Importing image backgrounds from collection or from the web as well as creating background images  providing context to the action.

The session created a great deal of excitement and raised towards the end an important question we need to address if we are to make a game of our own such as.. 

• How do we get the characters to do things when they meet or bump into each other?  
• How do we get sprites to interact with each other?..

This seems right now a good place to stop.. As it was with the students... Leaving them with a cliff hanger and waning more next time, when I have promised them with this as the prerequisite scene setter, that during our next set of activities involving the use of "sensing blocks,"  we wil be creating a very simple game a "keepy uppy type" game.  This will involve creating a "paddle" and "bouncing ball" the first steps in creating our own versions of "breakout."  Hope you drop by for our next installment.

Honeycomb 4: Thinking Through an Online Role Play Project

This term we have begun to use our Asus Ees in the classroom, and during one of our VLE blogging sessions the students began asking when we were going to be working in Honeycomb again. Well guys the answer is this week, and here's some of my thinking as I am preparing the tools I want to use with my class.

At the moment we are working on an extended literacy unit based on stories with dilemmas, and during our planning time last week, my partner teacher suggested using the text "The Worry Web Site" by Jacqueline Wilson as a stimulus. I loved the idea and an immediate thought was how much fun it might be if we could get the students to begin interacting with the text as if they were "Agony Aunts." The writing outcome we have proposed for next week after we have engaged with some of the children's dilemmas together from the book is to have the children draft a reply, to help a character overcome their dilema. Thinking about this for the last couple of days and how cool it would be to bring a version of the worry website to life that they could engage with in real time I wondered first of all about our VLE and creating an imaginary user space. But then I began to think about Honeycomb.

The space we need for this doesn't need to be all singing and all dancing, but does need to provide an environment where the children can interact together safely and socially, while experimenting with their thoughts and how they communicate their ideas and structure how they might offer their advice. I have put together 3 simple pages to act as a stimulus for this, all of them are simple web page like mockups.

1. The Worry Website Home Page
2. and 2 based on the Worries of two of the characters in the book Greg and Claire.

My original thoughts were to create a Wiki and allow the children to engage directly with the page adding their ideas as the week developed, however after some thought I began to see that maybe this might not work in quite the way I wanted the sessions to develop. I began to think instead how this might be an ideal opportunity to develop the space for "Role Play," as an interesting situation for the children to practice their commenting skills.

Honeycomb does not currently allow the creation of internal hyperlinks between a users pages. But colleague John Sutton has suggested a neat workaround for this. By saving the Home Page I have made as a Honeycomb Blog I can transfer the contents of each page in the model "Worry Web" I have already made to create a post and so allow navigation between the home page and the individual "worries." This has involved a little reworking of the material I made earlier, but now I can use this space to encourage the students to work together to plan and share their comments for each of our "worriers."

Commenting on Blogs is a real skill, and something I am not very good at myself. It should be really good fun to work with my students as they practice this skill. I am really looking forward to exploring this process with the class this week. Perhaps using it as part of our "Speaking and Listening" focus to develop a list of dos and don'ts that can help us work together more successfully in our other online environments.

Previous Honeycomb Posts

• Preparing to Work Online With Honeycomb
• Honeycomb 1: Peer Review or The Joy Of Commenting
• Honeycomb 2: Students innovating on a teacher tool
• Honeycomb 3: News, Thoughts, Reflections and Tools From Other Places

Lego Digital Designer: Another LEGO based CAD environment.

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LEGO Digital Designer : Virtual Building Software

This tool and free download has been all the rage in school recently. Discovered by a couple of our Y 6 students, who having used it at home managed to download, install and get it to run from one of the shared drive spaces on the network, it initially gained attention as the focus of some firm but I hope fair discussions about our acceptable use policy and argeement.... The ingenuity of it all!

I hope you'll agree with the resolution, too good to miss as a tool, but also because I want our AUP to work within the realms of trust, I agreed to download and look into an installation of the tool for them to use, on the proviso that in future, they should share tools like this that they would like access to in school with me first. This situation was an ideal opportunity to discuss the reasons why we do this and esafety issues such as licensing and copyright.

The Demo provided by the students and the brief play I have had with LEGO Digital Designer only scratches the surface of the potential uses I think it could have. It includes an extensive library of components that include Mindstorms and Creator kits. On a basic level the tool could be used in ways outlined in this previous post about the Freeware tool BlockCAD. Digital Designer is quite a different beast however, and with the inclusion of Technic and Mindstorms components could be used to support design work or recording from control activities using nxt. In addition the interface allows the user to switch betwen a number of different onscreen viewing modes.

• Build mode where models can be developed from existing prototypes or from scratch,
  
• Viewing mode where the model can be placed on different backgrounds, rotated, exploded and in some cases animated,
  
• Building guide mode, where completed models can be put together step by step, using a walk/step through video presentation, or building guides exported in HTML format.
  

My brief engagements with the tool don't as of yet I feel do full justice to this potentially powerful freeware platform. To get your imagination whirring and creative juices flowing I'd recommend you download it and check it out for yourself. Certainly the students who recommended it to me, J and T love it and this has got to be the best starting point for thinking about how the tool might be exploited further engage them. I would love to hear your thoughts, and ideas about where and how you might use the platform.

BlockCAD: Modelling Onscreen with "Lego" Style Blocks

I have had lots of fun playing with BlockCAD in between my other dabblings this week. This freeware tool has been pointed to for a while now by colleagues, with referals through feeds from del.icio.us and my colleagues on Twitter. Having seen it used in school on a Teachers TV programme this week I thought it was time to have a play for myself.

BlockCAD, is a computer aided design (CAD) environment allowing its user to build onscreen, 3d models using LEGO type bricks.

Screenshot From Anders' Corner of the Web home of BlockCAD

On opening BlockCAD the user is presented with an empty base board in the main design window onto which bricks can be laid. The dimensions of this board are not fixed and can be changed by typing the desired dimensions into text boxes to the bottom right of the window labelled base. To the right of the design window is a component gallery. To begin your creation, select your block clicking and dragging it to the baseboard. Clicking the left mouse button locks it in place. Rotating a block is achieved by right clicking the mouse before placing it. Within the gallery are a wide selection of blocks, that include many familiar components including wheels, windows, doors and so on. The colours of these components can also be changed by clicking the colour pallete above the component window.

I found that it was easiest to place bricks accurately if the baseboard was rotated to a plan view. Rotation tools on the tool bar allow the models you build to be turned through 360 degrees in both vertical and horizontal planes at any time during the construction process. There is no undo button. Deleting a brick requires the use of a mouse and del key combination. Pressing the del key before clicking on the brick in question, highlights the brick with a frame and hitting the del key again removes the brick from the model.

Throughout the making process the 3d model as a whole structure can be viewed from diffferent perspectives using the rotation tools. Using the capture tool, images of these various perspectives can also be captured and saved. Clicking the capture tool opens a dragable window that can be dragged around like a camera viewfinder to frame the image and view of the structure you want. These in turn can can be saved in a number of different image formats for use in other software environments.

I really like this tool, and as freeware students can access it and download it away from school too, opening opportunities for them to extend their creative uses and learning away from school. It uses as a model a construction kit type that we have readily available for students to use in school, and that they themselves may have at home.

The tool has obvious cross curricular applications within DT, where it could be used in the IDEAS and FPT phases to model outcomes and facilitate evaluation onscreen before students begin construction. If included as part of an onging design and make process by groups of students it could also be used through a cascade save process to track, monitor and present changes they make as a result of difficulties or considerations within their making processes. The images could be used in DTP outcomes for display or included alongside photographs in learning stories presented in Powerpoint or even photostory.

I also like the idea of the environment being used as a scaffold for onscreen instructional writing, mediated by talk. Images exported from the environment could be used to help students create and design new models, and frame instruction leaflets for others to use as reading tasks. Context, purpose and audience for their work. I'd like to add this to our modeling and simulation tool box and see what the crew make of it.

Greenfoot: A Summer Project

Came across Greenfoot, while I was floating around the web the other day, thinking about a control environment or microworld creation tool that we could perhaps make available on our Asus Toolkit for students. I was really looking for a version of LOGO or pondering Scratch, but what interested me about this environment was its use of Java as a development framework, with its ability to compile executable programmes to control elements introduced into the space. Even if we can't use the environment with the Asus platforms, the possibility of involving students in building interactive object oriented games, seems really appealing right now, though whether it will later or not I'm unsure. As an absolute novice programmer this tool looks really interesting as a personal in, so have downloaded to play over the holiday, and explore the possibilities. The video tutorials look really useful. If all works out perhaps this could be another tool to add to our simulation and control tool box for older students, its certainly a recommend and look see for secondary colleagues.

From Probot to LOGO: Some previous posts in action

I have put together this photo montage for the time being to share some of the activities my students have engaged in while using Probots and MSWLOGO this term. Even though presented here in an ICT context, references placed towards the end of this post highlight a number of areas from the Primary Framework for Mathematics with which the children engaged, through the using and applying strand, and which draw into focus the cross curricular potential of work such as this to help children make links between areas of learning.



The file is progressive and begins with the children using the probot to create skeletons around which they made and then decorated their own floor compasses. From here working in groups the students used their floor compasses to learn about compass direction, predicting outcomes from given inputs, eg if I am facing east, and make a 1/4 turn east what direction will I be facing? This required them to know and use the numerical values for rotation sizes, or to calculate these using halving and doubling strategies. Within the problems set we also replaced fractions of a turn with the number of degrees, and the directions of a rotation with clockwise/anticlockwise, and right/left. The children went on from this to make up challenge questions for their friends in other groups.

In the next series of activities the children made mazes using strips of paper. Working initially with right angles, some children chose to extend the activity to include 45 degree turns. The children used their knowledge that a Probot step was 1 cm to help them measure the distances the probot would need to move, and estimation to predict and test the size of turn they would need to make at each point in order to navigate the maze. After step by step planning the children were asked to input procedures, that would take the turtle from one end of the maze to the other without stopping.

The final photographs in the series represent a session in the ICT suite where children used MSW LOGO for the first time. The students were given a prepared treasure map which they loaded into the LOGO workspace, before we discussed as a class and decided the route around the island we would take, or the order in which we would visit particular landmarks. Transferring the floor based experiences of the students to the screen was not difficult, and after only a brief introduction to the commands and how these should be input, they worked very successfully and independently, to resolve many of the issues they encountered. In the plenary to this session the children were asked what they would like to do in the next session, and suggested that they would like to have a blank treasure map, that they could add landmarks to themselves, they could then ask their friends to journey around their island following a route they had prepared.

This series of activities, as well as the obvious ICT and Geographical links, offered opportunities for the students to engage practically with the following strands and related objectives from the Primary Framework for Mathematics

Measuring

• Know the relationships between.., metres and centimetres..., choose and use appropriate units to estimate, measure and record measurements
• Read, to the nearest division and half-division, scales that are numbered or partially numbered; use the information to measure and draw to a suitable degree of accuracy

Understanding Shape

• Read and record the vocabulary of position, direction and movement, using the four compass directions to describe movement about a grid
• Use a set-square to draw right angles and to identify right angles in 2-D shapes; compare angles with a right angle; recognise that a straight line is equivalent to two right angles

Counting and Understanding Number

• Read and write proper fractions, interpreting the denominator as the parts of a whole and the numerator as the number of parts; identify and estimate fractions of shapes;

While using and applying their knowledge and understanding of these areas in the context of problems and puzzles.

Many of the activities here are drawn from or build on previous posts that can be found within the control category to the left of the page.

The Craft ROBO Plotter Cutter: Integrating sensing, modelling and control in DT

On Firday last I spent a really enjoyable morning working with a colleague at our local secondary school exploring the Craft ROBO plotter cutter and its associated CAD package. I was really pleased with the Christmas card I finally made, but as a user of the Nuffield DATA Primary DT materials, available freely on line, this tool is now a potentially powerful addition not only to our DT toolbox, but also in support of the modelling and sensing strands of our ICT curriculum. Thanks to Phil for inviting us to take part in the DT project he is developing between a local cluster of Primary schools and his department with the support of the Medlock Charitable Trust. I left yesterday, at lunchtime with yet another toy to play with and share, a community sharable object based CAD package and one of these lovely tools.

As a personal professional support tool, I have uploaded these videos to return to later, but thought some of my regular readers might also be interested in taking a look at the tool and its potential uses for themselves.

Video 1: An overview of the Craft ROBO


Video 2: A demonstration of the tool


In terms of modeling, one of the things I liked about the tool is the potential to prototype. Designing on paper first how an object might look before beginning to develop the project in real time. Students can sketch design proposals to paper, and then transfer these designs to the screen, by applying shapes to a work surface in the craft ROBO software package. Being object based these features can be dragged around and placed using layout grids. Turning on snap to grid, means the objects can be dropped and held in place accurately on screen. Using colour coding, the plotter cutter can be instructed which areas to cut, which areas to leave and with the insertion of a biro, the tool is converted to plotter rather than cutter mode. Prototypes and mockups, can be plotted first, and then replacing the biro with a cutting bit, a prototype can be cut using paper first. Inserting dotted lines lead to perforation cuts, being made, that allows for easier folding by small hands, no need for scoring.

After prototyping the full design, can be developed, with photographs or images inserted to the design file. Printing out on a colour printer, leads to the production of a colour net and the addition of "registration marks." which are later used by the cutter to align itself in relation to the design, when instructed to cut. This has alsorts of potential for developing these sessions to discuss sensing and control, within the context of the DT application for which the tool is being used. I am looking forward to trying out this tool with students as christmas approaches, and have already got one or two ideas for how we might use this to develop standard as well as animated christmas cards.

Little Patches of Ground

Over the last couple of weeks I have encountered a number of excited mentions of the online tool voicethreads. Voicethreads, at its simplest, is a tool that enables audio commentary to be combined with annotation and photographs or other digital images to tell stories. A voicethread also has the additional social dimension that others can contribute to your thread, by adding recorded or written comments.

The potential it seems from what I have seen and read sofar, is limited like many such tools only by how we might choose to use it. Here are a couple of really nice examples of how colleagues have used the tool personally from

John Johnston
Paul Harrington

Reading these threads has lead to an interesting thought or two about how this tool could perhaps be used in combination with or to extend/embed use of the simple Vodcast structure I played with recently in combination with the Tizz's Travels Frame.

A colleague of mine a while back mentioned a project she wanted to develop around the Idea of "My Little Patch Of Ground," Essentially this project would involve students in engaging with a similar idea to those engaged with John and Paul, photographing or originally drawing their favourite places, and features of the landscape and location and writing about them. We originally discussed using Multimedia Authoring Applications and Digital photographs to prepare the material for inclusion in the school website. However Voice Threads and MS Photostory now seem to offer a new way of looking at this project proposal, and one I must take up with my colleague on return to school.

Linking into the wider curriculum, as well as the obvious geographical possibilities, this project has a number of other potential links to Literacy and Citizenship. In the case of Literacy the exploration of visual genre is an exciting possibility, considering how we might use traditional written formats in support of our thread, perhaps through the use of the frame to present and perform poetry as the basis for a textured script, as well as the recieved potential for documentary type presentations and recount development. In terms of citizenship our engagement with our location, has the possibility for identifying and sharing the views of people around us within the context of common experience of a place. Questioning, engaging with and challenging through comparison personal perceptions about our place in space.

In terms of the use of Voice Thread, the completed outcomes are hosted remotely, with code available to embed the project into blogs, and this is a useful element for me, as it has the potential to open the use of class Blog Spaces to develop and share the projects. I do have a current e safety concern, as my last visit to Paul's blog pointed to a worry he had regarding comment moderation on the threads he produces. There are however others not the least of which at the moment is the LA Firewall, and not being at school currently I cannot check whether the widgets that hold voicethreads in place can get through. It woukld certainly be an Irony if having worked so hard to develop these, the students couldn't access and share their work in school. We will also have to consider the ways in which threads are produced, in terms of the visual information they contain, and the texts developed, however this is an exciting possibility rather than a problem, as it is a teaching point that could be used to engage students practically in considering how the projects they develop relate to our e safety guidelines when producing material for publication.

Voice Threads and Visual Literacy.

As part of my podcast/vodcast experiment I have been using MS Photostory and Podomatic, alongside my Blogger trial. One of the affordances of Photostory is an ability to like voice threads add real time voiceovers to the images included. Perhaps a step back is what I need to take at this point. (Ed.. almost a jodaism, a bit of quick editing will fix this! A stepback at this point, what I need to take, is perhaps. Aah thats better.)

In engaging with visual and multimodal texts, as with traditional texts we need real time examples, texts we can share, explore and evaluate, as we would a book. The voice threads above would be useful starting points, perhaps as a stimuls. Working through these, the students could engage in a similar process to that I was beginning to think about earlier. developmentally publishing their "threads" through a literacy context, and as PC users, within photostory. When finished, the "threads" could be exported as Windows Media Video and using a site like Zamzar, the completed texts converted to Quick Time (.mov) files for inclusion in a Vodcast created at Podomatic. The purpose of this is ultimately to create a sense of purpose and audience for the texts developed. In developing this project I might encourage my colleague to create a station at Podomatic called "little patches of ground," to where the vodcast "threads" could be hosted, and linked in to Tizz's Travels, either as a separate page with an embedded widget, or by embedding the widget in an existing section of the site with its back link to the Podcast. Linked to Geotagging this project could also be exciting, in locating the the patches of ground through quikmaps, tagging the map with file names or episodes, and perhaps embedding the map produced into Tizz's Travels or a project blog. This is worth exploring further, particularly whether this map might be embedded in the vodcast station.

While I am whittering, I have been wondering about the possibilities this might have for comparing places through time. I have wondered about the possibilities in the past for recreating visual landscapes, by engaging students with photographs or paintings from the past while trying to frame the same shot as it looks in space today. Our city scapes and landscapes constantly change, and it might be an interesting project to discuss with colleagues around the use of trails and digital media. Wonder how this would fit around the exciting create-a-scape work being done at FutureLab, it is quite similar to this project carried out in the Kings Cross area of London I guess. It would be interesting though to build on this to develop voice thread type presentations that combined student's interpretation of the then and now, on return with their data.

Making a Start With Web Design and Development

Over the course of the year, many of the students in upper Key Stage 2 have been working with a host of web based, enabled or modelling resources and tools. Think.com has been used as a learning community tool, PowerPoint has been used to model the principles of hyperlinking and how web like resources work and can be developed offline. They have begun to develop blogs as a class, and engaged with online resources and with think to lay the foundations for understanding what it means to be safe online. This term and last we began working with year 5 on a pilot project with Fronter, the LAs proposed learning platform, and decided that this should be framed by a unit of work I wrote a number of years ago that was adopted and adapted to become part of the LAs scheme of work for ICT.

The unit was originally developed with a year 4 class, as a challenge to help me redesign the school's website. It began as all design and technology units do with evaluation and disassembly activities. We visited a range of websites already available on the web, and created by or for schools. We explored the websites identifying features we liked or disliked, narrowing down gradually those that we might like our website to include. From here on paper we designed a navigation bar, including genreal areas we would like to appear on our site. Having established our website zones, the children worked in small groups on particular aspects of the site, collecting photographs, interviewing people, and using MS Word and MS Publisher to create pages, which were eventually saved as html, and linked into a frame set I had developed from their ideas in FrontPage. The project was so successful that I and Keith Ansell our ICT curriculum Support Teacher extended the project with other local primary schools, as part of an ICT project for the Success@ action zone.

This term however I have begun using 2 Create,(2 create a story's sibling) as a framing tool to engage year 5 students with the process. We began as above, by visiting other school sites, and then returning to our own existing structure. Using their community pages as a starting point I introduced the idea of how some aspects of the site were becoming reduntant, or were perhaps repeating other tools we were using. I asked them in their navigation bar design process to consider how we might change or reorganise the community pages, removing links we were not using, or perhaps adding new sections that were not there in their place. What would they like to have on their website. Instead of using a paper based tool, I opted to use 2 create to enable them to visually develop, hands on, their own version of the site.

They began by starting a new project and inserting the first page, using this to install their navigation structure to. They used clipart as icons and buttons as well as text to do this. They had noticed how the navigation bar and banner section on the opening page of their community pages always remained the same, and in subsequent sessions I have been able to introduce how this is made possible. Our community pages are developed within frame sets. Although seeming to be one page, it is actually made up of three, when a hyperlink is clicked, only the page to the lower right is loaded the others remain in place. To enable this to happen on a single page layout like the one they are using in 2 create, the key is for the visual appearence of the page to remain the same, while only the content changes. Sometimes it is great being an old dog who can teach the newbies some tricks. How to make a 2 create page appear that it is a frame set. With the navigation icons and text in place, we have added coloured boxes to the left hand side of the page, and another along the top to look like the banner. We selected both of these rectangles and used the order tool to send them to the back. At this stage we still only had one page in our site, so looking at the number of icons we had in our navigation bar, which in most cases was 5, we inserted new pages. opening our first page in the viewer, we selected all objects by dragging around the slide, copied them to the clipboard, and then opened each of the remaining pages individually, and pasted these in place, so we had 5 identical slides, on which to present the content identified in our navigation bar. I know I could have skipped the copy and paste process by simply asking the software to insert duplicates, but I wanted the students to develop the select all and copy skill. I tools such as frontpage this would not be achieved efficiently by copy and paste either, but by saving each file as and renaming them.

The students then began linking the pages to each other, and inserting back links. To the lower right of each page, they now have a large clear space, and it is here they will place their page content, and when the link buttons are pressed, and a page arrives what they see appears to be like the frame set in the real school community pages, the buttons will appear in exactly the same place, as will the banner. The students are really enjoying this task, it builds nicely on their prior experiences with PowerPoint and Think, but here they have complete control over the objects and pages they are creating.

In addition what has been said above, what I think is really powerful about 2 create and the students will probably not fully appreciate this until the project is complete, is a built in tool it shares with 2 create a story and how the final project outcomes can be saved as Flash Files. Flash an industry and web standard tool, generates special movie files from projects developed, that can be embedded in to html or web pages enabling them to run as navigable files. These 2 create projects when saved as Flash Files will function in a similar way, with every small web project file the students have created running as if standalone websites within a single page on the school website. The children will be able to see and share their website projects live with each other, their teachers and their parents.

The structures they have identified will be used to develop the navigation and page structure for their VLE Space, somewhere we would like them to work next year. I will also be drawing on their ideas to refine the student community sections of the school website. By working on this project the outcomes they develop will influence a real web project.

The Four Seasons

In an earlier post I began talking about how year 4 and I have been working in the style of Monet. Using Photofiltre we have working on the concept of layering initially building up progressive file saves of our graphics a layer at a time through cascade saving images as we go.


File layer 1 was the background layer: Including a spray painted sky, and foreground, mixtures of shades of greens and blues.

File Layer 2: Was the background layer with a tree trunk and branches, constructed by varying and experimenting with the nozzle size, spray dispersal and can pressure controls, using shades of brown and black.

Using File Layer 2 as a template, the students have been exploring further, spray fill effects, by thinking about how the two trees and the landscape surrounding them might look during different seasons. After each seasonal image is completed the students have been cascade saving them, with new names, eg autumn, winter, spring, summer. The effects have been qhuite stunning, and so today we began to create a short animation using the images they have developed.


To do this we used MS PhotoStory 3. Importing the images, and then rearranging them on the timeline sequentially, before adding transition effects to the show. Finally we added a short music clip from the sample sounds provided, before previewing. I was really impressed with the outcome of this simple yet effective presentation technique.


It will be interesting to see whether we can duplicate or use a similar process to explore the reflection technique I would like them to explore with Paint, and perhaps combine the two sets of graphics within a show. Photostory, combined with the child developed templates, really helped me support the children in achieving the effect I was after as these simple images and scenes seemed to morph from one season into another.

Cross Curricular Control, BeeBot Games, Home Mades.i Board and Y1

There are a large number of ready made BeeBot Resources available from TTS, these include floormats, sequencing cards and a host of other accesories. We have purchased a number of these to support topic and theme based activity in class, and they go down really well with the students. The Focus on BeeBot Software is something I also recommend strongly, it not only enables on screen work to be developed from floor work with the students, but also has proven really useful, in beginning to enable colleagues to see the value of turtle work as a cross curricular tool. A 30 day trial download of the software can be made from the site above. Included in the package are a number of the floor mats as onscreen mazes, which we have used with the IWB during Numeracy and Literacy Sessions, to promote discussion about the properties of common shapes and to develop phonological awareness. What is also interesting is how the students react to being able to switch views to see the board as the BeeBot sees it. I have recently bought a site licence for this and am looking forward through coaching activities to further developing the use of this tool in Foundation and KS 1 classes.

In addition to the commercially available materials however I have also begun to introduce the idea of using resources we have available already to support BeeBot work in class. Did you know for example that BeeBots like to count. Creating Bus Stop type journeys (as in the Suffolk Empty Number Line Project) for the BeeBot, has enabled group activities to be developed around the use of number lines, and to begin seeing the forward movement of the turtle as addition and the backward movement as subtraction. The BeeBot and Number line have also been used to develop problem solving within the difference model and through for example, our Beebot is thinking of/ is on or at a number, if he counts on, adds, count's back, subtracts X he stops on Y, what number is he thinking of, or where is he? As seen in earlier posts it is also possible to make sequencing and theme based games quite easily, not only as a staff, but also with the students themselves taking an active role in the process.

Estimating, predicting and measuring using non standard units is also a useful mathematical role for the BeeBot, and with our year 1 students I used again the BeeBot Boogie mats we had developed for Y2, but this time to encourage turn taking, social play, prediction and testing within Ma 1. Ma 1 (Using and Applying Mathematics) is central to the New Primary Framework for Mathematics, and the ability to develop concrete visualisation and problem solving strategies, particularly in the context of shape space and measures can be supported through engagement of the students in practical activities supported by this versatile tool. Ideas such as right and left, linear measure, simple fractions, compass direction can all be introduced, or become inherent concepts within activities supported by beebot activity.

At the beginning of this term I used iBoard Purple activities to introduce our overall control unit in Y1, and to conclude we revisited and spent time working with the age specific tools in the iBoard red set, which require a focus on navigating mazes with greater accuracy, and introduce eighths of a turn. It was fascinating to see the students applying floor based work to their onscreen activity, and using taught strategies to think about and identify right and left turns. In other posts I have mentioned the use of gesture, as an indicator, and during these sessions I was really aware of this as evidence of learning, transferring physical whole and part body movements to thoughts about the inputs required to move the mouse, spaceship, bee, and frog about the screen. My Learning Support Assistant and had a great deal of fun engaging with the students with their games, and listening to the cheers, whoops and celebrations, (which attracted some attention from neighbouring classrooms too, OOPS!) Collecting fuel tanks, feeding the hungry frog before his food flew away, and the disappointment when he fell off the lily pads and into the pond were more than visibly evident around the room. If you have no idea what I am talking about, then I strongly recommend you check out the "Which Way, and "Control It" resources in the online trials of the software, which can be found following this link.

Thinking About Email

Our LA are about to begin a VLE Pilot, and some time over the next two terms some of my younger students will be required to engage with that QCA or LA unit on E mail, as part of our schools' scheme of work. I have often thought about why we teach this unit where we do, and why E mail, a device with such powerful potential seems to be used so little as a learning tool in the classroom.

We use e mail with students in schools largely it seems as an ICT only resource, a device where skills based teaching takes priority over context, meaning and purpose. Yet without purpose and context there is no meaning to learning about or with E mail. In literacy sessions we work with our students to develop their letter writing skills, hopefully in situations where they have a particular audience and purpose for the final outcomes. Within an email environment then we should be expecting the same thing. For sure there are skills specific to emailing which need to be taught and learned, but why are we sending an attachment, what is it's purpose, who am I writing to and why.

I do not feel, that students should only encounter e mail as a subject in the context of ICT. Students and teachers alike would find E mail as a tool more exciting, if units were regularly planned, to include email as part of simulation activities within theme based and topic work. For this to happen we need to see email as more than a unit we teach at year 3, but as a supporting structure for wider curricular activity, which could start through the use of email simulation software in Key Stage one, and develop through shared class work as a starting point or stimulus for ongoing classroom activities with the real thing. I have published a bright ideas page to my website today, what a fantastic christmas present this was, to share some of my thoughts. How about an online interview with Henry VIII at yourschool.org.uk, or keeping in touch with that roving reporter Barnaby as he trots around the globe? What if we could talk to Katie Morag, as a pen pal? Recieve a mysterious time warped message from a Saxon Villager or Roman Soldier stationed at Hadrian's Wall or Caerleon?

A favourite session we ran with Key Stage 2 students a number of years ago, involved a simulated hot air balloon flight. Set up by colleagues from a local secondary school, the students used simulated data, collected by a local ballooner to track his mystery journey from Bristol, until he landed. Within the simulation they were required to keep in contact with him, imaginary flight controllers, the local police and to write and submit press releases for a newspaper we published later to a set deadline in school for parents and other students. It was great fun.

All of these things obviously take time to set up, but as with most ICT resources, once collected, made and saved, sample texts and materials are there to be developed, changed and extended for later reuse. With a view to developing creative curricular and the new longer unit formats for the Primary Literacy Framework, perhaps their is a place for email as a learning tool within these areas, acting as stimuli as well as the ICT tool it is often considered solely to be.