In our STEM lessons on Monday 29 May and Tuesday 30 May, I continued using MicroWorlds. This time, I developed many more skills in the process of creating an online drawing pad. I also began to make an online coin flipper, although I have not finished making this yet. After this lesson I am feeling quite satisfied with what I have achieved on MicroWorlds so far.
In these two lessons I learnt how to make the turtle return to the centre of the screen (home). I also learnt how to make the turtle walk forwards 10 steps (fd 10) and backwards 10 steps (bk 10). Last week I learnt how to rotate the turtle by simply dragging it’s head in the direction that I wanted it to face. However, this week I learnt how to rotate the turtle 90 degrees by using code (rt 90, lt 90), instead of just doing it manually.
Now I knew how to move the turtle around the workspace, it was time to start drawing lines! From here, I learnt how to lift the pen up and down (pu, pd). I also learnt how to change the size of the pen (setpensize 3), which changes the thickness of the line that the pen makes. The last pen variable is colour, which I also learnt how to change (setc “yellow).
Next, I learnt how to make a text box and how to change the size of it. While doing this, I also learnt how to change the font, size and colour of the text, and how to bold, italicise and underline the text that I wanted to use.
After this, I learnt how to create a button and how to change the size of it!Creating a button allowed me to “press play” on the code I had created, without having to retype it each time I wanted to play it. Throughout this lesson, I found using buttons very useful.
I also learnt how to make and repeat procedures. Procedures are essentially shortcuts that you can use to make the code as simple as possible. For example, a procedure might be: square = fd 30 rt 90 fd 30 rt 90 fd 30 rt 90 fd 30 rt 90. Doing this means that you only have to write “square” into the code, instead of all of the individual commands.
After I had experimented with drawing different lines and shapes, I learnt how to clear the workspace (clean). I think that my learning was very productive in this lesson, and that there is a lot of knowledge that I have gained from this lesson that I will be able to use in the future.
Once again I used the digital dummies “Getting started with coding” book to guide me. But this time, I tried to rely on it a little bit less that what I did last week, to test me problem solving and trial and error skills.
Because I tried not to rely on the book so much, I did encounter a few problems while making shapes. It did not take me much time to discover that the angle that the turtle needs to turn before making each line of the shape is 360/how many sides the shape has. This method worked for most shapes that I tried, except two. The first shape that I had trouble with was a heptagon, because 360 is not divisible by 7. After a bit of trial and error, I discovered that the angles simply have to be as even as possible, while remaining as whole numbers.
After overcoming this problem, I soon faced another. I had some trouble with making a circle, as I had only learnt how to make straight lines so far. It turns out that it is impossible to actually make curved lines, and in order to make a circle, you have to draw 360 lines, with increasing angles of 1 degree. This took an extremely long time, but eventually I got there.
After this lesson, I will take away the many skills that I have learnt, so that I will be able to use them in the future to help me do more advanced coding as I get more experienced.
