Room 13 Algorithms and Creations

We have been learning about Algorithms they are sets of instructions that we give to computers.  We have made our own algorithms for the Beebots and our paper code - Digi Duck.

We have been making our own Digi Duck and Digi Duck friends to help us remember to ask before we post anything online.

Emily, Miranda, Iyra, Ashley and Samantha making their Digi Duck Creations

We have used Code.org to help us learn about creating Algorithms and using a mouse on a computer.

Emme and Elsa using Code.org

We used the lego to create a Digi Duck and then drew instructions for someone else to re-create our Digiduck. 

Samantha and Mirand making their Lego Digi Duck

Jackson and Jerry making their Lego Digi Duck

Even More Algorithms

Our year 1 & 2 learners have continued to work on their knowledge and skills around Algorithms in the Exploration Station this term. 

We've been thinking about directions and how we can get characters to move around the screen using Scratch Junior.  Here are a few of our first attempts using Scratch Junior on the iPads.  We had fund getting the scratch cat to dance around the screen.  Some of us got it to move through the screen more than once and some of us managed to turn the cat around.

 

We've also been using Code.org and the Pre-reader express course to continue to develop our skills with dragging, dropping and connecting objects on a screen as well as some basic block coding with Scrat, Angry Birds and BB8.  You can check out the Code.org courses by clicking here.

SHINE Online - E - Empathetic & Brave

This term we've started a Flipgrid for learners to share their understanding of what the E part of SHINE online means. 

SHINE online is a site we use to learn about being great online citizens.  You can find out more about SHINE online by clicking here.

Here is our Flipgrid so far, look out for more entries over the course of the term. 

If you'd like to add your own entry:
1. Press the plus button
2. Enter your first name and a dot for your last name  DO NOT Enter your email address
3. Record your video
3. Take A selfie
4. Submit your video

Mrs Lee will check your video to make sure it's appropriate and then post it to the grid.

Algorithms and Posting Online

Room 8 have been learning about things that are good and not good on the Internet.  We read a story about Digi Duck and his big decision.  Digi duck had to make a choice about posting a photo online of his friend or not posting the photo. 

It is important to check with your friends before you post photos of them online. 

Here are some photos of us working on our Digi duck creations

Making Digi Duck and his friends.

We were also learning about algorithms and how to build them to make computers do what we want them to do.  

Mark creating his Digi Duck algorithm.

We're Back!

Our Exploration Station blog has been a bit neglected lately, but we're back now! Watch out for a flood of posts coming your way.  Most of the posts will be back dated to keep the blog flowing nicely so you might need to go back a bit to see some of the new/old ones.  

If you're a subscriber remember to click through to the actual blog page.  Often the email you receive as a subscriber doesn't include a lot of our photos and videos as they are posted within Google Slide decks and won't show up in your email.  

Empathetic and Brave - SHINE Online with Room 22

This term in the Exploration Station we'll be looking at the E on the end of SHINE for our SHINE Online program.  E, in this case, stands for Empathetic and Brave.  It's thinking about how what we do online is important and how we can make sure what we post is going to help others.

Some of our year two classes managed to help write their own blog post.  Here's what Room 22 wrote with Mrs Lee. 

Hello, we are Room 22 and we are building a road in our brains.  We are learning about what to do before we post online.

Here are the things we need to remember:

• Don't put nasty things online.
• Check before you post online. 
• Report anything you see that is nasty.
• If you see something nasty tell a trusted adult.

This is Olivia, Claire and Olive coding with Digi Duck

This is Phoneix, Oscar, Jacob, Theo, Grace and Zoey making a Digi Duck and his friends

This is Eric making comments on a class blog

This is Dylan and Masan coding using Code.org

Sharing our Shine

A group of dedicated Sunnyhills TeXperts shared their expertise with learners from Our Lady Star of the Sea today.  Over the last few weeks, they have been working hard to create workshops and then practice them to make sure they're going to work.  Our learners were helping Our Lady Star of the Sea get some experience with the robots we have so they can make decisions about what robots they're going to to get in their school.  

Our Sunnyhills team did an amazing job on the day, they definitely had their Sunnyhills Shine on.

Here are some of our learners in action... 

Inputs and Outputs

We've had a great time with Year 2 Learners in the Exploration Station over the last few weeks.  They've enjoyed learning about what an algorithm is and creating their own algorithms, as well as debugging their algorithms once they'd tested them. 

Our Year 2 learners worked together in groups to talk about what they thought a digital device was.  They came up with a few criteria but weren't one hundred percent sure so we're going to keep looking into what makes something digital.   

We also talked through what we thought the inputs and outputs for each device were.  We shared other devices we had at home or had seen before and what their inputs and outputs were too.  Other inputs we noticed were keys, trackpads, light or lack of light (a sensor) and microphones.

We then got to design our own creation that had an input and an output.  Some of us created things we'd seen before others decided to create completely new devices.  

Year 1 Algorithms

Some of our youngest learners have been back in the station this week and enjoyed figuring out how to write their own algorithms.  We used resources from Barefoot Computing to learn about algorithms.

An algorithm is a process or set of rules or instructions to be followed.  We can create algorithms for computers using code.

Learners thought about a character that they could teach someone else how to draw.  The all tried drawing Mrs Lee's Mr Monkey character by following her algorithm.  Then they worked with a buddy to and told their buddy their algorithm to create a character they had thought of.  Their buddy had to follow their algorithm to draw the character.

Here are our Mr Monkey drawings

We talked about how a set of instructions we give a computer is called an algorithm.  We need to be really specific with our instructions because computers only do what we've told them to do. Sometimes we need to debug those instructions if the computer doesn't do what we intended.

Each learner got their computer (a classmate) to follow their algorithm to create their character. Learners then debugged (changed, added, took away) their instructions and asked a different buddy to give them a go.

Here are the instructions we created and a few photos of us working the process of creating them and testing them:

We're Computer Scientists!

To start the term off the Exploration Station hosted two of our year 4 classes.

We reviewed what the station was about and our Safe and Sting SHINE Online learning from last term.   It was great to hear all about how our learners are staying safe online.  Most of our learners are well aware of the importance of letting their Mum, Dad and caregivers know what they're doing online, creating strong passwords and using resources that are just right for them.

Students were very keen to get creating in our space so we learnt a bit more about SHINE Online by looking at Helpful and smart before we planned how we could show others about being Helpful and Smart using Makey Makey's and scratch.

To help us with our Scratch coding we listened to the story If I were a Wizard by Paul Hamilton.  In this story, Hazel introduced us to some coding/computer science concepts like repeats and loops as well as sequence and order.    We talked about how computers only do what we tell them to - or what we've programmed them to do and that if we want the computer to give the right output we have to think carefully about the steps we tell it to go through. We then put this learning into practice while we created a variety of different things to teach others about being Helpful and Smart online.

We did a lot of debugging once we connected our Makey Makey's to our creations as some of our code didn't work.  We had to think carefully about our sequence and what we were asking our computer to do once it received inputs from our Makey Makey.

We didn't quite get all our creations finished so we took them back to our classrooms to do a bit more testing, making and sharing.

Coding with Whiteboards & iPads

Our Year 1 and 2 learners have been very busy in our Exploration Station over the last few weeks.  As well as creating videos and using a green screen we also looked at how we can get technology to do what we want using code.  

While the learners were in the space we also talked about how computers need specific instructions to make sure they do the right thing.  Mrs Lee showed us how computers can be a bit silly sometimes and they do something different to what we wanted them to do because we haven't given them the right instructions.  

To help us think about this concept the learners created their own coding grids and then worked in pairs to be the computer or the coder giving the computer instructions.  We coded our computers (plastic animals) to go on adventures through our coding grids.  It was tough and we ended up in the learning pit because we had to really think about each step the computer needed to make. 

If you want to create your own coding grid at home you can download and print this one.  We coloured our grids in and drew pictures on them to make our coding adventures more interesting.  

Coding Grid

Our Year 2 learners also went on to test our their coding skills using Scratch Junior (and iPad app).  We started off by getting the scratch cat to move and managed to work that out pretty quickly.  

Our learners were able to make the scratch characters move, talk and even change colour and disappear using the coding blocks in scratch.   Scratch junior uses blocks to code rather than the arrows we used in our coding grids.  

If you have an iPad at home you can download the Scratch Junior app here.  You can also use the more advanced version of scratch on a Chromebook or another laptop/computer.  Both versions are free.

Going Green with Our Littlest Learners

Even our littlest learners visit our Exploration Station and it was fantastic to welcome our year 1 and 2 students to the station over the last few weeks.  They were very excited to be in a new space and have a go at using a few different apps on their class iPads. 

Our focus in the station this term has been SHINE Online particularly staying Safe and Strong online. While in the station we listened to a few stories and watched a Hector's World video that helped us to think about how we can stay safe and strong online.  We reinforced our knowledge about asking a trusted adult before we go online and keeping our personal information safe.   The students in year 2 particularly liked the 'our online neighbourhood' video we looked at by Common Sense Media.  We have a link to it on our Level 1 Safe and Strong page in our SHINE online website.

The learners decorated their own characters to talked about how to stay safe and strong online and then used them to make a Green Screen movie to teach others about staying Safe and Strong online.  Mrs Lee helped our year 1 learners to put this into the Doink Green Screen app and our year 2 learners had a go at doing this themselves.   

Here are a few photos of us working through the video and green screen process

To help us work through the process we used this slide deck: 

This was the first time we've used a green screen and the Doink app we're still learning how it works and all about what makes a great video.  Here are some of the videos we created...

Computers from Cardboard

We had a few lighting fast sessions in the Exploration Station last week due to Mrs Lee being sick.  Some of our Year 3 and 4 learners only had a half session each.  They still managed to start some pretty amazing creations with our Makey Makey's, cardboard computers and Google Slide animations.  

Our last year 4 class visiting the space getting on with creating their Makey Makey and Google Slides animations... 

We've now had a visit to the station from all of our year 3 classes.  They focused on creating their own computers and adding a button to them that explained one aspect of staying safe and strong online.  This was a great challenge and we had to dive into the learning pit to get through it.  The learners used a tool called Vocaroo to record their voices and then we connected them to our Makey Makey and their cardboard computers. 

We listened to a story by Linda Luckas from the Hello Ruby series all about a journey into a computer.  This helped us to find out a bit more about the bits inside a computer and what they do.  We were able to use the computer template created for the Hello Ruby series to help us to make sense of some of the new names we had learnt.  

Each learner had to move their Vocaroo recording into their Inquiry folder, this can be extra tricky when you haven't done it before.  Once we had shifted our files we were able to test out our computers with our buttons using a scratch program and a Makey Makey.    It was like magic watching the buttons on our computers causing the tv to talk using our voice! 

Check out some of our recordings about staying safe online..

  

Here are a few photos of our year 3 learners creating their computers and sharing the finished product with us ... 

Glueing, cutting and decorating

It's tough work getting all the pieces in the right place

Concentrating hard on the decoration of our computers - we think they look great!

Making sure we have the right bits inside our computers

Our finished cardboard computers

Sharing our Knowledge with Makey Makey

This week we welcomed another of our fabulous year 4 class to the Exploration Station.  Our focus again has been on building our knowledge and skills to stay safe and strong online.  We used the information we saw on our safe and strong videos to help us to conquer the Tower of Treasure - one of the games in Interland by Google.  

Have you conquered the tower?  You can view the Interland resources for families here 

Photo Credit: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/key-open-castle-close-close-up-1422810/

Once we had gathered some more knowledge about how to stay safe and strong we used this in our Makey Makey or Google Slides animation projects.  These projects are designed to help others learn about being safe and strong online.

Here's a short video of one of our Makey Makey projects in action...

A Makey Makey is a device that connects our models to our computer and allows us to program our models to do things like - talk when we press a button.  The basic operations of a Makey Makey are explained in this video.  You can also find out lots more about the Makey Makey on their website.

A few students create Google Slide Animations too.  Here are just a few of the ones they started but not quite finished yet... 

We Can Make it!

We welcomed our first year 4 class to the Exploration Station this week for two sessions about staying Safe and Strong online based around our Level 2 SHINE Online curriculum.   This time we looked at creating either a Makey Makey project or a Google Slides animation.  Both of these projects definitely got us sitting in the learning pit as many of our learners had never used either of these tools before.

We started off learning all about staying safe and strong online, we thought this funny song from Hectors world was actually quite useful in getting us thinking about staying safe and strong.  It's been around for a long time so we talked about some things mentioned in the video we might not have to worry about anymore - like virus scanners - we don't need to install these on a Chromebook but we still need them if we're using a Windows or Macintosh/Apple machine.

For more great resources about staying safe and strong online visit our SHINE Online site here.

We didn't quite manage to finish everything on our projects, here a few photos of our process.  We will share our finished creations in our classrooms and maybe on our classroom blogs. 

Here are a few of the animations our Year 4 Learners have started creating... 

Code Club

Many Sunnyhills students enjoy coding so we've setup a code club that runs once a week at lunchtime.  Our current club will run for this term and then we'll look at giving another group of learners a go at code club. 

Our coders are currently using Google CS First to create a few activities and get a few basic skills to use in Scratch.  

We have just signed up for our own CS First accounts and we've been creating our own Google Logo animations in scratch.  Some of us managed to get our logos finished and have received our first CS First certificates.  We get awarded a certificate each time we complete an activity or theme in CS First.  

The Google logo project gave us a few ideas we could use for our animations, many students in our club took their projects home and made them even more amazing.  We created a studio for our projects and will share it via the blog once we've completed them.

Code Club Google Logo Animation - Scratch Studio

In the mean time here's a great project created by Marco.  Can you get the logo to change?  What key/s do you need to use?

Marco's project page can be found here https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/290090045/ 

What's a TeXpert?

At Sunnyhills we have students who are keen to learn more about the technology we have available in our school and want to share their expertise with other students.  These students apply to be TeXperts.  This year we have a great group of year 3 to 6 students who are really keen to learn and share.  We meet every week in the Exploration Station for TeXpert training. 

We have started the year with a few basic skills like creating our own avatars using Google drawings where we honed our skills with shapes, images, fills and gradients as well as order within a Google Drawing.  We're eventually going to use these avatars on our Digital Badging accounts.  

As TeXperts we're also responsible for the Tinker and Maker equipment we have in our library.  This equipment can be used during lunch time and when we visit the library with our class.  We working on a timetable for each of our year 5 & 6 TeXperts to be available to other students in the library at lunchtimes.  Our job is to help anyone that gets stuck and to make sure the equipment is used safely.

One of our 3D Printers

A few of our badges

This week we've also started designing our own TeXpert badges and 3D Printing them.  We have printed a few of our first versions and we'll be looking at how we might refine these over the coming weeks.  Once we're all happy with our designs we'll mount our badges so we can wear them on our uniform and you'll be able to spot Texperts around school. 

Exploring, Thinking and Making a Connection

We are welcoming two year 6 classes into the station this week after their awesome camp adventures.  Continuing with our theme of staying safe and strong online these two classes have been hard at work planning what they're going to create to earn their Level 3 Safe and Strong badge. 

When we're working in the Exploration Station we always start by thinking about our learning and exploring the topic we're working on.  Once we're ready and think we have enough information to start creating we work on a plan.  

We use a Google slide deck to plan, the slide deck is just a place to hold our thoughts - we might have typed our thoughts onto it, created pictures of our plan or we might have drawn our plan on a whiteboard and then taken a photo of it and put it into our slide deck.   This keeps all our planning in one place so we can refer back to it. 

When we have finished our plan the extra awesome bit happens - we get to put it into action.  This is our Making a connection and Share and shine part of our learning pathway.  

Students gathering resources ready to make their Safe and Strong creation

Year 5's Keeping Us Safe

This week the Exploration Station welcomed two of our year five classrooms.  Our first session for each class focused on staying safe and strong online.  As this was their first trip to the Exploration Station we went over our procedures in the space which seem to be working really well.

Exploration Station Procedures

Once we had the procedures sorted, we looked at what we need to know and understand to get our SHINE online Level 3 Safe and Strong badge.

SHINE Online - Safe and Strong Level 3

We worked on an activity where we wrote down two things about ourselves and then decided if they were okay to post online or if they weren't okay to post online.

We debated what happens when something we trust asks for things like our birthday, is it okay to post it then?  We also looked at combinations of personal information and how it can be hard to figure out if we should post our favourite fruit if we're also posting our first name and lots of other scenarios.

Some of the things we think are okay to post online if they're the only thing we're posting.

It can be tricky to work out what we should and shouldn't post online.  The best thing to do if we're not sure is to ask a trusted adult like our teachers, Mum, Dad and adult caregivers.  They can help us to figure out what we're posting and if it's safe for us to do so.  Even adults can have a hard time deciding what to post though so NetSafe is a great place for them to go if they're unsure.

We also had a look at the Be Internet Awesome game - Tower of Treasure that tests our knowledge of safe passwords and what should and shouldn't be posted online.  A few of the students managed to get all the way to the end.  Have you tried this game?  Give it a go by clicking here.  Remember to claim your certificate once you finish the game so you can proudly say you know how to keep your treasures are safe online.

Once we had a bit more knowledge about staying safe and strong online we started planning our artefact that will help us to get our Safe and Strong digital badge.  We can't wait to see the finished products, so many great ideas in these two classrooms!

Getting into Creating

The Exploration Station welcomed back some of our Year 6 learners again today.  Their aim was to start and continue the creations they planned for yesterday.  We had a big variety of creations happen to help show and teach others about being Safe and Strong online.  

We had a rap, posters, video, scratch games, models, even a cardboard safe.

Here are a few shots of the students in action during the day...

Astronauts and Test Pilots are Go!

Today the Exploration Station welcomed the very first classes of astronauts and test pilots.  As this is the first round for classes to visit the station everyone is testing out how the space works and we'll be making tweaks along the way to ensure our orbit remains smooth in the future.  

Today our astronauts and test pilots hailed from Room 1 and 2 and are in Year 6.  It was super exciting to finally have some students filling up the station and coming up with ideas about SHINE Online and Computational Thinking. 

We started off thinking about the Exploration Station Procedures and why we needed to learn about them.  We're currently using these words to help us remember the procedures while we're exploring the station...

• Ask if we're unsure
• Walk in the station to keep safe
• Think Green - Be sustainable with resources
• Share resources 
• If it's a tiny piece that no one can use it goes in the right bin
• Click means listen up we have a message from ground control

In the Exploration Station we have a What? Why? How? board this is where we put our learning for the day.  Basically we think about what we're learning, why we would be learning it and how we're going to learn it (essentially the resources we will use.

Here's the brainstorming each class added to our What, Why How board today.. 

Students then went on to 'Get Thinking and Explore' both SHINE online and our Computational Thinking challenge resources.  These are linked off our Exploration Station website.  When they were happy they had enough information they started planning a creation that showed what they had learnt about computational thinking or SHINE online - Safe and Strong.  

A few students managed to finish their plan and have started prototyping their creations.  They're all looking forward to sharing more about their creations tomorrow.