Professional Development -

Professional Development - Digital Circus

This PD has been extremely valuable and I have really enjoyed Digital Circus. It has helped to step up my own teaching practice and content knowledge for Digital Technology. I have learned a lot about coding and my next steps of where I could move to for the kids of mine that already can code. Before digital circus I had thought - what next for these kids? Where do I push them to if they can use SCRATCH already etc? Digital Circus has given e those steps and also we have just been given access to Code Avengers, another great site that gives the opportunity to transfer that knowledge into other coding programmes like Java and Python. 

These photos follow the steps I took to code a micro bit using the site https://makecode.microbit.org/#editor .

I coded the micro bit with a set of conditions and then downloaded that code on to the micro bit so that when the micro bit was triggered by an external input that met the condition, it would then follow it.

We began with making the LED light flash and then started adding variables like reading the temperature and adding an action if it was greater or less than x or y. 

We also added a variable to test moisture and a set of codes that would be much like a garden sprinkler where it would turn off and on depending on the moisture levels that the sensor recognises. 

We also used a motor and predicted angles and coded the micro bit accordingly. I also learned how to reset the motor to a chosen angle and can be seen in the photo below. 

The circled code is a conditional statement I made to check if the condition is true. If it is true then you have given it a command to see that it happens. 

Steps we took when coding the micro bit. 

Example of some of the code I used. 

Animation of the mircobit