Skip to main content

Scratch Dance Pad

My 4th and 5th grade STEM class students created an interactive light and sound dance machine. Using a Picoboard, a sensor board, the students designed and created mat switches to interact with a dance program they coded on Scratch. Two pieces of structure materials, such as cardboard, were lined with foil on one side of each panel. Students determined that the two pieces had to be separated slightly with the foil-lined sides facing each other. They used tissue, foam cutouts, paper, and other insulators to separate the two halves of their mat switches.


While some student groups began mapping out their dance pad layout, others finished making their various mat switch designs. Speaker wire was used to connect the electrical current to each dance pad or switch. The wire then connected to the alligator clips on the Picoboard. The Picoboard connected to a computer that projected its screen on an interactive white board.


Students created and executed their own computer programs using Scratch. When a student stepped on a mat switch, the circuit closed and ran a code in their program to show different colors and play different sounds on the interactive white board. Each mat switch activated a unique combination of color and sound, depending on the group’s Scratch program.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tippe Top Design

The physics behind the tippe top toy have been the subject of studies by scientists for years - dating back to the early 1890s. The tippe top is spun just like any other top, but pulls a surprise stunt. The top flips over and spins on its stem when given a strong twist. Why does the tippe top flip over? What does this mean for anyone planning to make one on a 3D printer? Nobel Prize winners, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr, take a break with a tippe top at the 1954 inauguration of the Institute of Physics in Lund, Sweden. Early Top Patents The first patent for the top, listed as “Wendekreisel”, was filed in Germany by Helene Sperl in 1891. While the patent seems to describe the top’s inversion property, reproductions of the top have proved unsuccessful. The patent expired after one year because the fee wasn’t paid. During a trip to South America, Danish engineer Werner Østberg noticed kids spinning a small, round fruit. While spinning, the fruit would flip over (or...

micro:bit Fireworks with Python

I used the MicroPython editor to program a fireworks animation that controls the brightness of the LEDs as the firework explodes on the LED display. For young computer science students, this is a great introduction to text-based programming, arrays, and animating LEDs. Code # Display message and show pacman with firework option from microbit import * firework1 = Image("00000:00000:00000:00000:00200") firework2 = Image("00000:00000:00000:00200:00100") firework3 = Image("00000:00000:00200:00100:00000") firework4 = Image("00000:00000:00900:00000:00000") firework5 = Image("00000:07870:08580:07870:00000") firework6 = Image("60706:01210:72127:01210:60706") firework7 = Image("30503:00000:50005:00000:30503") firework8 = Image("10201:00000:20002:00000:10201") all_firework = [firework1, firework2, firework3, firework4, firework5, firework6, firework7, firework8] while True: if button_a.is_pressed(): ...

Sprites & Games

Any graphical object or character in a video game is known as a sprite. Code provides instructions for sprites. A game’s program can tell the sprite how to move or react when a button is pressed. Every time Mario bops his head on a box and a mushroom appears, sprites (Mario, the box, the mushroom) are interacting with each other and responding accordingly based on the game’s code. You can create your own sprites to use in your video games! I used Piskel , an online sprite creation tool, to create my m4ttbit sprite for a blob-catching game I made using Scratch . Piskel lets you create an 8-bit or pixelated sprite and even animate it. To create an animated sprite, you’ll want to develop a frame for each movement. A frame toolbar in Piskel lets you easily create a frame for a standing sprite or a series of images to make it look as though your sprite is running, jumping, or flipping. When you’re finished creating the frames or series of images for your sprite, export them by savin...