More Than One Way to Orbit in Scratch

Today I shared a three hour workshop at TechKnowledgey 2013 in Missoula on using Scratch software with K-12 students in the classroom, in after-school clubs (like Chris Simon did at Independence Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma last year) as well as “Scratch Camps.”

My favorite things that happened during the workshop, when teachers were exploring and building in Scratch, involved an “orbital challenge.” One of the teachers wanted to make a sprite (object in Scratch) move in a circle around another sprite. She is a K-12 art and music teacher. This challenge sounds simple, but it isn’t immediately obvious how to do it. The teacher finally figured out one way to do it, and shared her project / solution online. These are the scripts she used:

I posed this challenge to our entire group, and another teacher (who is a new grade 9-12 math teacher, starting her teaching career after being a civil engineer) figured out another way to do this using trigonometry. How cool is this?!

Here’s a 21 second video clip showing this Scratch solution in action.

It’s a simple Scratch project, but it’s a great example of several things:

1. In Scratch as in other kinds of programming / problem solving, there is often more than one way to get something done.
2. With code, often there are simpler and more elegant ways to accomplish a goal. Sometimes the ability to “see” or figure out that elegant solution comes with more knowledge and skills in a content area (like math) and sometimes it doesn’t.
3. The mental toolkits we’ve built over the years can both constrain and direct the ways we approach problems.
4. Simple challenges can lead to complex thinking and problem solving.
5. Solving math problems together in Scratch (which are very concrete and purposeful) can be fun and challenging. (Gary Stager might say this is “hard fun.”

)

I love Scratch and helping others both learn about Scratch and get EXCITED about sharing Scratch with students!

  by  ScratchEdTeam 

Technorati Tags: scratch, stem, programming, code, coding

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Stephen Wolfram on Computational Thinking – 2023
• Google Training and Learning Opportunities in Oklahoma – 2014
• Distressed Over the Rising Costs of College (and other things) – 2014
• Welcome to Hogwarts (August 2013) – 2013
• Exploring Instructional Uses of YouTube with Lucy Gray (August 2012) – 2012
• Mobile E-Book Options for “On-the-Go” Readers – 2012
• Digital Textbooks using iBooks (August 2012) – 2012
• More Highlights from Glacier National Park – 2011
• Include Geo Location Info for iPhoto Exported Flickr Images – 2011
• MediaWiki spam cleanup recap and tutorial – 2010