Micro:Bit Number Guessing Game / Binary Search

RE: Micro:Bit Number Guessing Game / Binary Search

dasoussan — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 23:29:27 GMT

I know this is post deadline, but someone might find it helpful.

Day1: Demonstrating Binary Search vs. Sequential Search with the students lined up with numbers on the front / letters on the back. 4 students self-selected to be the letter searcher, taking (high+low)/2 entry and setting their high / low limit accordingly. After they saw how the algorithm worked they were given the lab attached at the beginning.

The students were programming in Snap! (which is a spin-off of Scratch) and I was hoping seeing a different IDE for a different but similar language would give a good map to the real world. I can't count how many development environments I've gone through in my career.

I showed a few of the differences - access to radio, how variables are created and new options appear once the variable exists, how the A+B button doesn't show up on the IDE until it is tested for, etc. Most of the students took to the coding right away. A few needed more hand holding than I'd hoped, but they are the ones struggling with Snap.

Day 2 was all coding, some getting so close calling me over to see it run correctly only to find they weren't really there yet. A few misunderstood and were coding a person guesses number game where the computer chose a number at random - which is a program they did in Snap about 7 weeks ago.

Day 3: Right at the beginning one student was ready to push into a Micro:Bit - by the end of class, 6 out of the 15 or so students present in class were ready. A few took them home to show their parents. At the beginning of class I put some scaffolding code on the board to help the struggling students get up to speed.

The classroom teacher thought it was a great exercise in seeing how programming is the same conceptually even when languages or platforms are different - the knowledge and logic transfer over as do debugging skills.

RE: Micro:Bit Number Guessing Game / Binary Search

dasoussan — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:21:41 GMT

Today a few students had their code working in the simulator and they pushed them to the Micro:Bits!

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RE: Micro:Bit Number Guessing Game / Binary Search

neilk — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:35:18 GMT

Hi [mention:e4c98ee7ea8846e38b8b995c1882e8d0:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] - David!

Very nice documentation [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-af13b570-40ff-4894-89f1-413a66a27421/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]. I hope all goes well with the students after the holiday break.

Neil