Week 8: Creating a game reflection

This week I have been asked to use the site 'scratch' , to create a fish tank with fish swimming around and an octopus moving along the bottom. To learn to do this I was given a link to a video full of helpful instructions.

Image1: Redware,2015 

After watching the video I went to the Scratch site and begun to have a play around getting use to the various tools and buttons and their uses and identifying them with the ones I had seen in the instructional video.

Image 2: Scratch, 2015

I then deleted the cat icon, as the 'tips' section to right had told me to do. I accidentally clicked the background behind the cat and instead of saying costumes next to the 'scripts' tab it now said 'backdrops' so I clicked on it and was able to see that I could change the background for my tank. I made it a pretty blue and then moved on to make new characters for the tank. I found the 'new sprite' button or the crazy haired looking character underneath the white board and selected it.  

Image 3: Scratch, 2015

Image 4: Scratch, 2015

Once I had selected the animals I wanted to be in my fish tank I wondered if that was the place to get some ornaments for the tank. I found some rocks and a palm tree so I added them in as well. I then moved the sprites around the white board until they were where I wanted them. 

Image 5: Scratch, 2015

 I then clicked on the fish in the sprites section, as seen above and then the events tab in the blocks of code area.

Image 6: Scratch, 2015

 Another window appeared.

Image 7: Scratch, 2015

This allowed me to start my sequence off. I looked at the video instructions again and a still of what his sequence for his fish looked like and saw I needed to use the 'when clicked' block so I dragged that to the page to the right. I continued to copy his fish sequence, using the blocks that he used. I also duplicated my fish as he showed how to do in his video. My finished fish sequence looked like this.

Image 8: Scratch, 2015



I did this for both fish 'sprites' to make lots of swimming fish. I then had to make the octopus move from one end of the tank to the other. I found this a lot more difficult since the video didn't relate to this particular move. It took me some time and trial and error methods to work out how to best make the octopus do this. I was able to figure out how to get him to move from one end to the other but he wasn't moving straight. I continued referring back to the instructional video and preforming trial and error with various motion, events, control, sensing and operation blocks until it effectively moved from one side of the screen to the other, in a straight line, however he kept slightly moving down as he went along. This took more trial and error and a lot of thinking until I worked out that I had set the 'x' and 'y' codes wrong. They were set to low on the screen, so I raised the numbers and he was moving perfectly straight to each side but then he was flipping over soon as he reached the right hand side and returned to the left upside down. This really had me stumped and I could not figure out how to turn him around rather than have him upside down. I could not figure out why he was upside down but after a lot of fiddling I came to the conclusion that he could not turn around and display his left side to the world he could only display his right side. To work with this dilemma I programmed him to walk backwards to the left side of the screen and hoped this would be good enough for the task set to us. This is my finished octopus sequence:

Image 9: Scratch, 2015

This is what it looked like finished:

Image 10: Scratch, 2015

It took me just over an hour to figure everything out, especially the octopus. I originally wanted more sprites active in the tank however due to time constraints that didn't happen. I did however enjoy

designing this fish tank and knowing that it was all made from the codes within the blocks. As I said due to time constraints I unfortunately had to finish up my design rather quickly and couldn't find how to display the codes out of the blocks to screenshot it for this entry. I also wanted to save my design to upload but that wouldn't work and I am not 100% sure as to whether it should of worked when I have not signed up to the site? As mentioned, it was a little hard to understand with the instructions given and therefore would better benefit older students however it amazing to do and fun to make. It inspires you to be more curious and persistent with your tasks whilst keeping you motivated with practical tasks. It definitely got my computational brain thinking making it a lot easier to understand with the prior knowledge I have gained from this course. I will use the website 'scratch' to teach my students about code and how they can design their own creations or solutions to problems through the use of digital media.  "To complete this task my students would be have to use their process and production skills to check existing solutions and identify transferable solutions, use and interpret data, describe their problem, and evaluate each other's solutions. In this way, they are engaging with the process and production skills as well as knowledge of creating through coding" (Fasso, 2015)

05/05/15

Having just watched the collaborative tutorial from last night I have realised that more in depth instructions were provided if I hadn't of gotten ahead of myself and that my browser must not of been working correctly because there were buttons I was unable to see when I created my design. Buttons that would of enabled me to share my design on here for you to all see rather than having to rely on my screen shots which is a bit saddening. Might I add that I was quite sad yesterday when I realised I could not share or save my work for others to see my completed design that had taken a lot of effort and time. Now if I am this upset about not being able to share my work, how will my much younger students feel about not being able to save all their hard work? Managing an over-commitment to areas of engagement is something I would have to plan ahead for and keep in mind when planning engagement lessons with the students and how I will tell them they won't be able to save their work or how else we can save it in other ways such as screen shotting like I have done above. This is a good discussion topic to do with the students about digital technologies and problems we can have with them. 



References:

Fasso, W. (2015). Week 8 Course Materials: Engagement Activity: Reflection. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=13735
Redware. (2015). FISH! GAME. Retrieved from Redware Research Limited, http://scratch.redware.com/video/fish-game
Scratch. (2015). Untitled. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tip_bar=getStarted