Hello everyone! This is the thread for the Vidcode Virtual PD Course: Coding for Educators. Please post your projects and takeaways here!
Pixelated Monarch Project
This is the link to my first project. I think my students would really like this project because they can connect making filters with using filters for social media. I’m excited to see what’s next.
This is beautiful, thank you for sharing!
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Make-a-Meme Project
My students love memes! Normally we would just use a Meme generator but this is so much more impactful. I can’t wait to share this one with students, but also with teachers! True Story: I was an English teacher for 14 years. I’m just fascinated by the use of semicolons in JS. I also love the idea of Syntax in programming. There are so many things we do that require information to be put in a certain order. Sentences. Math Equations. Code. These are great connections for students to make to their other learning.
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Slide Show Project
How to Make a Haiku
This is awesome and I can see the students really getting into using this for their projects. I already show them how to make stop animation using Google Slides. This is going to be a great extension activity.
I made my “images” in Google Slides and downloaded them as PNG. I love doing this because if you use their “Insert”>“Image”>“Search the Web” feature you get images that are licensed for use and Google Slides makes it super easy to create the visual you want instead of finding one someone created for you. In the future, I would use more programming to create text for my slides.
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Animoji
This was challenging! However, this makes me want to go back and really learn about Arrays and Modulo more so that I can understand better.
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It doesn’t really reflect how much time I spent playing with the settings, I think the kids would definitely have fun with it.
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Deal with It Project
I was working on this at night and came back to it in the morning. Even after all the Debugging practice before this lesson, I still couldn’t see that I was missing one tiny brace in my Loop!
This was good. I felt like my students probably feel when they can’t see their mistakes. Fresh eyes in this case worked, but I also wished I had a buddy. Paired Programming is something I’m going to incorporate more, even in Distance Learning.
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This was fun! I think the kids would enjoy personalizing it, though I think I’d want to look into them to use their own voices rather than the music. I remember finding an old record my dad & Bobshi sent to my Pop Pop when he was serving in WWII, it was so special. I can see grandparents really appreciating that in this time of social distancing.
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So wonderful! It’s so much harder to find bugs without help. One thing we’ve seen work remotely are class meetings of 5-6 students, where students can share their screens and others can help debug. Another option is for students to publish their broken projects, and for other students to remix them and help debug that way.
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@Gordon I love that idea of publishing broken programs for others to remix & debug! It’s usually me they’re debugging for! 
News Broadcast Project
I didn’t totally follow the directions on this one (I’m a horrible student sometimes) and instead of a PSA, I made more of a GIF. 
I would let my students work together to create more elaborate News Stories or PSAs. This would be great for School News or Current Events. I love including a storyboard for them to plan out their ideas and using the notes sections to brainstorm how they might Code what they want to see on the screen before they try it out IRL.
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I’m afraid that my Meme attempt wound up reflecting how I feel about the world situation than anything else.
@JaimieGrose Your PSA is still better than a lot of stuff that’s out there right now. Made me smile.
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Eclipse Project
It’s broken and I can’t debug it mostly because I need to learn more and practice more. I published it, but I’ll keep going back and working on it as I learn to see if I can get it to work. My moon moves! I’ll take that as a win…for now.
The woman in the video was right. This activity would be difficult for beginners. Maybe I’d let them do it in phases (pun intended) so as skills improved they would be able to make the simulation more complex.
I’m doing these between summer reading things as a fun little break for myself, so I’m not uploading my own pictures. Hats off to whoever picked Mae Jemison for this. I noticed when I placed my text elsewhere it didn’t technically move or change size, it appeared to be different sizes in different places depending on the picture. If I had more time I’d make sure I was using images the same size, but I think it would be interesting to throw this problem at the kids and see how they decided to work with it. (Unless my project is technically broken and I didn’t realize it?)
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This is great! We’re always unsure whether or not to include this in the PD, since it is a more advanced project, but you did a great job!
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This is perfect! Your project isn’t broken - we leave it up to the students to upload pictures that are about the same size.
@Gordon yeah, that note at the start about using your own pictures makes a lot of sense. Maybe next time.
I really like the way this one turned out visually, but I admit I got caught up in the filters. A good reminder to give time limits for making choices!
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It’s beautiful! You can definitely see the care you put into this project.
Hi all:
Here’s a link to my first Animoji project
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