Computational Thinking PO2 – unplugged (partially) and DDDO PO2

This activity has been adapted from a dance party activity I have seen on code.org, there is a link in the slideshow to the activity.  This computational thinking activity is designed to illustrate how teachers could use dance, as a vehicle for computational thinking and to then extend the activity into music creation using some online music creation tools or even Garage Band etc, these two activities are finally combined into a performance recording the dance and the music accompanying the dance, it is important that the music the students create is original to them, in order that they can investigate rhythm and tempo and also not fall foul of copyright if they want to publish their work, and they should!

For teachers who want to see an example of the code for this challenge, then you can see it here: Dance Party

The simple animation here is designed to show students how they could make an avatar of their new move that they could share with their collaborators.  This link is to help teachers see how the code could work, obviously do not share this link with the students, if you want them to work through a problem and solve it!

The following video illustrates the new Scratch interface, but cruicially also has a tutorial within it on how to use the updated drawing interface in Scratch, so that your students can create their own avatars and animate them.

Whilst the coding is not a huge element of this activity, students will generally find the drawing aspect, initially, a challenge.  However, applying computational thinking to the animation process should result in some very exciting outputs.

If you want us to make more of this kind of resource please contact us at david@dakinane.com and we will make more resources to share with you, related to your need.