Counting Machine with Grade 5 to 7

Listen to this on Soundcloud. 

This gives you some idea of what we have done in our lesson on the 23rd of July. This transcription is being read by Raveena, using Narro.

What do we do after logging into Purple Mash. What is the first thing to do? We go to the activities that have been set first.

The Counting Machine Activity

Today's activity has a repeating Activity; called the Counting Machine activity. You find this listed in the 2Do section of Purple Mash, the red clipboard button. You should know where that is -afterall you have been interacting with Purple Mash for some time.

In the Counting machine activity we produce a number sequence. We bring up different numbers, one after the other, as if counting. 

First read the instructions that go with the activity. We read it: we are to make a counting machine. We use a button called the count button. 

When you, click on the count button, something will happen. Clicking on the count button makes the number in the result increase by one. That means the resulting number will go up, by one, its called incrementing. 

Knowledge at the Start of an Activity 

A help video is shown, when you start a new challenge -this is a video that allows gives you some knowledge, at the start. This is very helpful as you start with some knowledge, if you choose to watch that video. It is useful to watch a video before you start an activity. By watching the video you get a better understanding and more knowledge that you can use, to do the activity. 

The video will feed you information, providing you with a better understanding of the expectations involved in doing the activity. 

The Help Video.

The help videos can be accessed whenever you are stuck; through the blue button, with a white question mark. You will find the video provides, a link through the hints, which is even more helpful. However, a warning does pop up; it will indicate that points are deducted, for using this help Video.

What the warning pop up means.

This pop up warning is only linked to videos in the hints section.  The Purple Mash videos tell you a lot more about the activity you're doing; though these videos should only be a last resort if you really are stuck. We should attempt to try do the tasks all by ourselves, first. 

Test your abilities -see if you have the ability to do the Purple Mash activity, with the least amount of help. But, If, you do get stuck; it is quite okay to go to get help. You are welcome look at these videos. 

As you get better at coding, you will become more skillful; so you will be able to do more of the hard work -without relying on help of any sorts. We do not want any learner to become lazy and reliant on help, just because its easy. This has them not wanting to work, as the answer is there. This type of thinking is a problem; it that comes up, especially with having help readily available, at the press of a button. We lose the ability to try do it by ourselves. So its important to understand when and how we interact with the helpful videos. 

The counting machine activity repeats; you do it for two more weeks. I am hopeful that you are going to get to the point where you don't need any help, as you'll know exactly what to do. 

Making what we learn understandable.

This will help you to become more confident, and lead you on the road to becoming a more creative person and a  better coder.  

In the first challenge, we, click on the count button. The name of the button already gives us some idea about what the button does; that is the button counts. In my previous lessons I highlighted the important practice of naming things properly; your code should describe itself. What I am trying to say? We must make our code understandable. Otherwise it is difficult to read.   

The code must say what it does. The bits and pieces, the blocks in your system of code must be descriptive. Descriptive means it is meaningful, understandable or readable. 

We use a count button -which Triggers off some code, on the click event. Then a number is shown. The number displayed is the result of the Onclick event. We call this number the result -the number is what's going to be shown.

We call the code in count block, when we click on it.  The number which we called is the result. The result goes up, by one, each time we click on the count block. 

I would encourage you to go and experiment with the various options i.e., the set to, subtract and multiply options. These four methods are shown in orange. Each of these does something different to the number and result. 

Be a computer scientist. You can experiment see the changes in the result, through the operation. We must experiment try out these different option -choosing multiplication or subtraction too.    

Building Challenge after Challenge.

To move on to the next challenge, the results will be showing, a result that keeps on showing an addition of one. Every time one more than the last click, by clicking the count button.

We start off with the number 0, the default value of the score. On clicking on the count button, on the first click, we would add 1 to 0. That first click would give us a result of 1; then on the second click event, we would display 2 as the resulting score. Each click is adding 1 more; so we will be display a sequence, 3 on the 3rd click, 4 on the fourth , 5 on the fifth click and so forth and so on.

I hope that you enjoy the activity. I will post more of what was put across in the coming post.