Bits and Bytes

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Alice Links:

• Main Site – www.alice.org
  • About Alice
• Download Alice Version 2.2 with Alice textbook worlds- from WSD
  • Windows with Learning to Program (185MB)
  • Mac with Learning to Program (162MB)

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student’s first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice’s interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course.

Alice Demonstration

http://blogs.wsd1.org/etr/files/alicedemonstrationvideo.flv

Scratch is a programming language from MIT’s Media Lab that makes it easy for students to develop programs.

Scratch is not so much a procedural language as a drag and drop environment for creating interactive animations, annotated stories, slideshows, prototypes and games. It’s designed to be as simple to use as possible, so students as young as 7 can create their own animations.

The design philosophy behind Scratch was “don’t design something for kids that you don’t also find engaging and interesting,”

To create programs in Scratch, one simply adds “sprites” onto a work area and then attaches actions to each sprite to make them move, change color, bounce off other objects, and make sounds.

Scratch is available for Mac OS X and Windows, and can be downloaded for free at scratch.mit.edu.

Why use Scratch?

• LwICT Continuum
• Bloom’s Revised Digital Taxonomy
• Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age
• New Pathways into Robotics: Strategies for Broadening Participation
• Scratch and 21st Century Learning Skills
• Edutainment, No Thanks…

Download Scratch from WSD

• Download Scratch 1.4 – Windows Installer (from the WSD)
• Download Scratch 1.4 – Macintosh Installer (from the WSD)
• Scratch Learning Cards – (from MIT site)

Award Winning High School Course

• http://www.funlearning.de/
  • PDF of the above site (English)
• Research Paper – Three Drivers for Creativity…

Documentation, Tutorials Learning Resources for Scratch 1.4:

• PicoBoard – Real world sensors for Scratch projects
• Programming Concepts – for Scratch 1.4
• Reference Guide – for Scratch 1.4
• Scratch Site at MIT – An on-line collection of Scratch applications
  (over 500 000 projects)
• ScratchEd – Teacher and Presenter Resources
• Learn Scratch – Video Tutorials
• http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Scratch/Book/ (Howard Abrams blog site)
  This site contains a well written book on using Scratch (Download and online)

Calorie Activity

• Activity that demonstrates one method of validating responses.

Scratch Extensions – New Versions by Other Authors (blog site)

• BYOB – A version of Scratch that allows one to create their own blocks (updated – based on Scratch 1.4)
• Some of the features of BYOB (these features are unique to the modified version of Scratch 1.4)
  • custom blocks (functional recursion)
    • includes majority of Scratch 1.4 features (esp. string functions)
    • can open/import any Scratch project
    • arguments now take  both numerical and text input (and reporters)
    • double click on a custom reporter block to show its result
    • the block editor’s answer field includes drag & drop functionality
    • improved debugging functions (error blocks are displayed red)
    • escaping out of infinite atomic loops
    • block editor is resizable
  • nestable sprites (structural recursion)
    • create composite sprites (made out of subsprites)
  • • sprites can be nested infinitely, making them “parts” of more complex simulations
    • subsprites follow their owner’s motion, heading, resizing and graphical effects, and serve as their owner’s extended sensors
    • subsprites can be set to follow their owner’s rotation, or to rotate independently
  • other
    • share sprites in a mesh network (this includes nested sprites)
    • built-in compiler lets you convert any Scratch/BYOB project into an .exe (Windows only)
    • autoscrolling
    • scrolling by dragging
    • undo

Simple Geometry – Create a Square (No Repeat)

Simple Geometry – Create a Square (With Repeat)

Extensions:

http://blogs.wsd1.org/etr/files/square-circle-1024x768.flv

Download the video 1024 x 768 – 10 mb

Click to view image.

http://blogs.wsd1.org/etr/files/square-circle-extension.flv

Download the video 1024 x 768 – 2 mb

Click to view image.

Slide Show

Download:

• Slide Show

Stage 1 - Add Images

Stage 2 - Script

Stage 3 - Add Sound

Set Variables

Next Slide Button

Previous Slide Button

Go To First Slide

• Scratch Programming – Stop Motion Animation
  • Day Dream – (Download from WSD)
  • stop motion; cars racin – (Download from WSD)

Square

Square – NO Loop

Square – Using Loop

NXT Quick Start Guide by Rob Widget

This is an excellent guide written by Rob Widget to support the implementation of Lego NXT into UK schools, the Lego Kit referenced is # 9797.

Highly recommended!

Download

Comic Life makes it easy to create comics, graphic novels, manga, picture albums, story books, and more. Comic Life provides professional templates for instant, and impressive layouts.

• MacInstruct
• Comics In the Classroom.net
• Comics In the Classroom.net – Lesson Plans
• Comics In Education
• Comics In Education – Print Resources

• Desktop Publishing

  • Scribus (DTP software – open source)

• Office Suites

  • OpenOffice (open source)

• Note Taking

  • EverNote (not open source but FREE version available)
    EverNote allows users to capture, organize and retrieve text notes, web clips, mobile phone snapshots, images containing printed and handwritten text, digital ink notes taken on tablet PC and PDA, and more.

• Random Name Selector

  • The Hat (free)
    The Hat is a simple but handy little utility that offers a fun and easy way to automatically determine a random order from a list of names. It can also be used to pick pairs of names to create random partnerships, and comes complete with cool animation and sound effects.

• Other Documentation (these documents require Adobe Acrobat)

  • Web links
    List of web sites used for some workshops.

• Celestia

  • Space simulation (the solar system and beyond – Open Source)

• Google Earth & Google SketchUp

  • Google Earth Web Site (not open source but FREE version available)

  • Google Earth SketchUp Web Site (not open source but FREE version available)

• Google SketchUp – SketchyPhysics2

  • SketchyPhysics (SketchyPhysics is a plug-in for SketchUp (Windows Only). It combines a simple and easy to use interface with the power of a fast and accurate physics library, the Newton SDK

• Google SketchUp – Rendering Software

  • Kerkythea (Open Source)

  • indigo RENDERER (FREE for non-commercial use)

• Google Earth Tours (Google Earth must be installed before viewing these tours)

  • GoogleLit Trips (link to original site)
• NASA

  • World Wind (includes World Wind Moon and World Wind Mars – Open Source)