Lower School Creative Computing

In Tech class, fourth graders explored data about all the third and fourth graders at Friends this year. They learned about browsing, searching, sorting, and graphing with information that was interesting. Favorite ice creams, colors, movies, tv shows, books, board games, and activities were categories this year.

This unit included creating many different graphs with Google Sheets:

Here’s one about favorite colors. Year after year, blue is the most popular color!

Some of the children decided to graph movie categories rather than the individual movies.

Data Exploration and Digital Citizenship

The digital data we collected for this unit is available only for Friends Seminary Third and Fourth graders. The link to our information is neither listed nor searchable. There are no first and last names in the file that the students browse, search and sort.

As these students grow, others will gather data about them in many different ways. This data will not always be protected.

What happens when you join a social media site before you are 13? Or what about other online accounts? Can what is learned from data be shaped or distorted by the way the questions are asked? Our safe data unit can be training wheels for navigating the ever- expanding role that information plays in our lives and discussing the importance of data privacy.

Friends Lower School Teachers participated in a week of June Professional Development Workshops again this year. In Making and Tinkering, teachers explored KIBO robots, paper circuits, and Makey Makey, which turns ordinary objects into input devices for Scratch programming. On the Stop-Motion animation day with artists from The Good School, teachers refined their animation techniques and also spent time brainstorming about grade-wide and interdivisional projects. These workshops also gave teachers a chance to give each other practical tips for tech in their classrooms, hone their Google Apps skills, and think creatively about this year’s new 8-day-schedule.

How lucky the Friends community is that teachers have this opportunity to experiment, create, and share, all in a setting that is invigorating and relaxing at the same time!

This was an exciting week in Linda’s class. From May 12th to May 13th, ten chicks hatched. At first we set the app iStopMotion to take a picture of the action every 99 seconds.  Once the chicks started coming out of the eggs, we set iStopMotion to take a picture every 12 seconds. We also moved around the eggs so that they could be closer to the camera. We made one silly mistake, however. We forgot to tell the maintenance staff not to turn off the lights during the night, so we needed to edit out the frames when the lights were off.

You can see many of the eggs hatching here:

At Friends, third graders study the layers of the ocean and the creatures that inhabit each one. In Tech, students learn about the different types of commands in MIT’s programming language Scratch. Using Scratch, they start creating backgrounds, sprites, and code to make these elements interactive. This year, a new Scratch project helped students learn to program while it reinforced their understanding of ocean life.

Toward the beginning of the activity, I used Google Drive to share a Scratch file with my students. In it, the layers of the ocean are clickable.

Then the students did their part.

With markers and pencils, computer graphics programs or from within the Scratch interface itself, students drew sea life. No clip art was allowed!  Those who used pencils and markers or a graphics program like Pixie learned how to turn their pictures into codable Scratch sprites.

The next step was coding the spites so that they hid at the beginning and only appeared when the appropriate layer was clicked upon. Once they coded the ocean life to appear, many students programmed their creatures to swim across the screen.

Finally, students chose their favorite ocean sprites, using the school Google Drive account to share them with me, and then I, in turn am using Drive to share the third graders’ sprites back to the whole class so that they can include some their peers’ sprites in their own ocean life project.

The code that makes the fish move comes along with the image, so it can happily swim in a another student’s project.

If you would like to look at your third grader’s ocean life Scratch project, first download Scratch 1.4 from the Scratch website.  Then you and your child can sign into your child’s Google Drive account. Download the Scratch file and open it up into Scratch. If you have any with any of the steps necessary to see the project at home, you can email me at jseidel@friendsseminary.og.

Happy swimming!

What is animation?

Frames from a third grader’s animation of chicks hatching

What type of animation does each of these pictures represent?

Do you think that when we use new technology, it still takes a long time to create a stop motion animation?

These are some of the questions I asked Friends Lower School students at last week’s Animation Assembly in the Meetinghouse. Together we watched a 1985 behind the scenes movie on how John Clark Matthews animated Frog and Toad and the more recent ending credits of The Boxtrolls. Both movies helped students understand the incredible hard work that goes into making a stop motion film.

Children then saw stills from stop motion animations by Friends Seminary students.

They also examined where in the world this year’s NYICFF Short Films One animators created their films. Several, including Anatole’s Little  Saucepan, Submarine Sandwich and Imagination were made with stop motion techniques.

Катерина Чепик (Kate) the creator of  Imagination is from Kiev, Ukraine. At the end of the assembly, I shared the three questions that I had emailed her.

When did you first become interested in making animations?

What are some of the materials and methods that were used to create Imagination?

What do you think helps make a good story?

She made us a special movie with the answers to the questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVnb0fxtK6E

Thank you Kate!

Working with creative colleagues to try new interdisciplinary curriculum is a delight. This past month I’ve been excited to be involved with two innovations.

Second graders test a distance sensor.

In a second grade Science class, Ben Horner and I are piloting a unit that combines K’NEX, WeDo Sensors and the Scratch programming language. As second graders study simple machines, they build catapults with K’NEX. Then with Scratch, the students created program that causes a Scratch “sprite” to change color and size when the program receives an input. The next step will be making sure balls those catapult launch set off the action in Scratch

Stay tuned for movies of the K’NEX catapult – distance sensor – Scratch connection in action!

Antonia Daly and Second Graders explore the life cycle of the paper we use.

Another exciting new unit grew out of the curriculum development work of the Digital Citizenship Task Force. Back in July, this group of faculty realized that careful attention to resources when we use computers and iPads is essential to digital citizenship or “stewardship,” one of our Quaker testimonies. With Melissa’s guidance, second grade digital stewards are now investigating how paper is wasted at Friends. From Anotonia Daly, our Sustainability Coordinator and faculty emeritus, they learned about the resources used to create paper and how this process changes when we recycle. With, Kelly, our librarian, they explored resources for discovering more factual information and infographics about the paper making and paper recycling process and its impact on the environment.

For a month, the children carefully counted the discarded print-outs from the library printer and the second and third floor hallway printers. Once they had collected paper for several weeks, the young investigators and I examined the online data about the actual number of pages printed. The students used their burgeoning math skills to compare the total number of pages printed to all the sheets that no one had retrieved.

This past week, art teacher Isabel joined the class. While some formed “new” paper  from the discarded print-outs, others used it to fold “new” envelopes. Second graders will use the hand-made paper and the hand-folded envelopes for letters that they mail at the First Grade Post Office.

Second graders creating envelopes from discarded printer paper

In upcoming weeks, the second graders will share their experiences and discoveries with the rest of the school.

For Computer Science Education Week, all divisions of Friends Seminary organized special coding and programming activities.  During the December 11th Buddy Time, Third and Fourth graders explored the logic of programming with their Kindergarten and First Grade friends.

The Third and Fourth Graders learned that when it comes to teaching younger children, preparation pays off. In Tech Class they went online to get an overview of ScratchJr.  They then chose a ScratchJr worksheet that connected up with their buddies’ interests and practiced going through it. Those who job it was to introduce the the Bee-Bot robots performed several trial runs in K411, our Tech classroom.

Fourth grade students got ready for Buddy Time by going through activity worksheets at the ScratchJr website.

Since the older students had already tried out their lessons in Tech Class, teaching the Kindergarteners and First Graders during the Hour of Code went smoothly; students in all six classes learned a lot. Our Lower School “upperclassmen” also remarked that ScratchJr was great for their younger friends because it didn’t require reading.

Chris and Danielle’s students were matched with Linda’s students and they all worked with the Bee-Bots.  Though these robots have just a few simple controls on their backs, when the Kindergarteners and First Graders collaborated, they quickly realized that the Bee-Bots could follow complicated set of commands.

When they returned to Tech Class this week, students asked,

“Are we doing ScratchJr again?”

“No,” their teacher said. “We are returning to Scratch (Sr). We have so much work to do!”

Third graders are using the graphics program Pixie to design their own characters. Then with If Statements, they are causing something to happen when two of their characters meet in Scratch.

The fourth graders are programming their original heroes to travel through a maze. Soon they’ll be dreaming up obstacles that these heroes must encounter and eventually overcome.

In the more robust version of Scratch, concepts that ScratchJr and Bee-Bots introduce to young children are deepened and extended.

Two Bee-Bots live in each kindergarten classroom and ScratchJr is on all kindergarten and first grade iPads.

Go coding in the Lower School!

Third and Fourth Graders will be their buddies’ teachers. On Thursday, December 11th, the older Lower School students plan to introduce their kindergarten and first grade friends to BeeBot floor robots,

and ScratchJr, a new programming language for young children.

In Technology class, third and fourth graders prepared their lessons by trying out ScratchJr themselves. They found activities for early learners on the ScratchJr.org website.

Fourth Graders get ready to teach ScratchJr to their first grade buddies.

Third Grader: I can’t remember my password.

Judith: I can look it up for you.

Third Grader: I love my password!

Judith: I’m so glad. I tried to come up with passwords that you would like.

Third Grader: Can I tell my parents my password?

Judith: Yes, you can tell your parents, but not your friends. Your parents can help you learn how to spell your password.

Third Grader: I still can’t log in.

Judith: It’s @friendsseminary.org, not friendsseminary.com

This year we tied getting these accounts to returning the Digital Citizenship agreements signed. As a result, this third graders have an understanding of the responsibilities that accompany having your own account.

Two important guidelines are shaping how third graders care for  this information.

• I will protect my privacy and the privacy of other by not sharing personal account information

• I will not access anyone else’s account or act as anyone other then myself when using technology.

Third graders have not only memorized their Friendsseminary usernames and passwords for Google Drive. They have also used this log-in information to access our new library catalogue system.

Fuzzy memories of being lulled to sleep in dimly lit seminars rooms. Sophorific PowerPoints, KeyNotes and Prezis. Experts who haven’t set foot in the classroom in years distributing teaching tips. At one time or another, teachers and administrators have all experienced some not-so-exciting professional development.

That’s not the story of this past June’s Tech Training for teachers.

18 Lower School faculty practiced what we value in our teaching: creativity, process, collaboration and experimentation. Stop Motion animation was our vehicle and teaching artists from The Good School, an organization devoted exclusively to Stop Motion Animation, were our guides.

Our Lower School teachers got messy making their background and characters. They lit, filmed and developed a sound track.

Some of the joyous experimention is here:

http://youtu.be/MXtRM2xpX0E

http://youtu.be/8LDzgnNu0xo
http://youtu.be/EmjgsyFa8Nw
http://youtu.be/wQsmdgE_6BQ

http://youtu.be/kb9s3m8SX0M

http://youtu.be/gQhL6giO0nA

http://youtu.be/22m67Fwthh4
And a few of our pedagogical and classroom management “take aways:”

• When you create a stop motion, pay attention to the camera angle. This year we tried to set the camera at a 90’ angle from the background and story characters. This gave the movies a storybook feel.
• When capturing frame by frame, communicate well with the members of your team. Otherwise, extraneous hands can become part of the scene.

• Adjusting to the “sense of the meeting” seems to happen on its own. For example, as a team of animators creates their cast they naturally adjust the scale of the characters so that they can act together.

• When they animate, children and teachers explore narrative, materials, and math. They solve complex design problems as a team.

The Lower School looks forward to many exciting classroom animation projects this coming school year!