Here’s your last Tech Tuesday!

If you want to learn about tech and how to make your own apps and games this is the place to learn the skills!

All of these tasks are extra, fun, things to do, not must complete tasks, so only attempt it if you fancy it after your other work.

Quiz Time

This Friday is the P4-P7 Clan Quiz.

We’ll be using forms to answer this quiz.

But did you know you can create your own quizes in forms?

Here’s a video about how to do that. Ignore the bit at the end for teachers about posting to assignments.

So why not try it yourself?

Maybe you could set a quiz on your favourtie subject for your class and post it using the share link feature onto your class playground/kids chat or tech channel.

P6 and P7 Optional Advanced task.

Another interesting feature of forms is branching. This is when the answer you give to a question leads decides which is the next question.

Branching guide

Maybe you could use this idea to create a quiz that gets harder if you are finding it too easy and easier if you are finsing it too hard?

(TOP FACT: This is actually how Sumdog Works, If you are getting questions right it gives you harder questions. If you get them wrong it gives you easier questions.)

Have fun coding and building Digital Dalry!

Here’s your next Tech Tuesday!

If you want to learn about tech and how to make your own apps and games this is the place to learn the skills!

All of these tasks are extra, fun, things to do, not must complete tasks, so only attempt it if you fancy it after your other work.

Heath Robinson Machines

William Heath Robinson was a cartoonist.

Now why is Mr Bennett doing a Tech Tuesday about a cartoonist?

Well Mr Heath Robinson liked to draw cartoons of over-complicated machines and techniques for doing mundane, day to day, tasks.

Here’s one of his pictures from world war one showing silly ways of doing things.

His work inspired films and cartoons, especially some of the machines in Wallace and Gromit.

Since he became famous for these pictures his name has become the name for silly, over-complicated machines made for fun. People have made examples of these over the years and especially during COVID.

Here is a video of a Heath Robinson machine made during lockdown.

Coding is normally about the opposite of complication. Normally it’s about simplifying things.

However, creating games and apps is also about iteration.

Iteration is about testing and improving what you are working on.

When I do robotics, in masterclasses at Dalry Primary, iteration (testing and improving) is key to getting our code to tell our robots to do what we want.

So why don’t you try making a Heath Robinson machine yourself! Video the results and send it on teams or pop it on YouTube (with your parents permission).

Top Tips

Start at the end: These machines are best built backwards. Start with your last action and build backward in time towards the start.

Test: Test each part a few times to be sure it works the same every time.

Section: Once you have a few pieces built and are certain they work take out the starting element of that section before building the next. Or you’ll be resetting the whole thing all the time and get very tired. We code movement sections indvidually in robotics lessons.

P6 and P7 Optional Advanced task.

Making Heath Robinson machines is tricky in real life but even more tricky in the digital world.

If you think you caould try why not make a Heath Robinson machine in Scratch which at one click of the green flag makes one sprite know into another and another to achieve a task. You will probably need multiple screens. Here’s another video of a real life machine to give you ideas.

Try to make sprites that make sense and move differently, like magnets attracting to metal and balls rolling.

Have fun coding and building Digital Dalry!