This weeks blog post assignment is to write different things about a video we watched. I am going to be writing about a man who invented an app with code to control electricity. I find it very interesting how you are able to control huge amounts of energy all from a tap on your phone. I think it’s really amazing to see people create things like these that can really revolutionize the world. The app he just created wouldn’t be possible without coding because coding allows certain things to connect and control other things, if it didn’t have that the app would be of no use. Keira (a girl who constantly appeared in the video) said that almost anybody can learn code, and that is helpful to know so that you always know that within time will come success in coding.

In this weeks work for Computer Tech, we had to make a spreadsheet with information about something we were interested in. It had to include a graph, an image relating to the subject, the information itself, and a formula that you coded allowing the computer to do the calculation. Below is my spreadsheet:

My spreadsheet was about the population growth of different countries in North America. It included the Country and then the percentage of population growth. It also included and image of North America, a graph to display the information, and the average population growth calculated by the computer. Here is the graph I made:

I added my formula by:

1. Tapping on a box with information I need to create it

2. Dragged it down to select all the information I need

3. Clicked the average button on the bottom of my screen

By creating this spreadsheet I learned about the different population growth stats of North America. I learned this by the chart and the information I put in. I think spreadsheets would be helpful for calculating athletes stats and storing their information. I’m sure professional sports leagues use something like this to keep track of their players stats.

Above this text there is a screenshot about a code I created in a tutorial, I am showing this because in this weeks work we had to take two tutorials on Tynker. I chose to do two about math and I’m going to be talking about them, in the first lesson I answered math questions a character asked me and then I had to remake that code, but I got to change how it looked. After I finished that part I had to take a quiz about the things I’ve learned in math from this lesson. It was about prime numbers and square roots. For the second lesson it was the same process, I had to answer questions a character asked me, then remake the code while changing how it looks, and then take a quiz on the math knowledge I had learned from the lesson. The lesson was about how to calculate averages. In these tutorials, the say and answer blocks are used to quiz you on a school subject. The tutorials really show how coding and technology helps you learn things and makes things easier to do. If you look at the picture above you will be blue to see the blocks I used for this code, a few I learned how to use were function and answer blocks. Those blocks opened up so many other possibilities to Tynker that I never knew existed. Overall, I thought this weeks work was fun to do and taught you a lot about Tynker.

In my quizlet project I asked 4 math questions that you had to answer with the correct answer. If you got it right, my character would say, “Correct!” If you got it wrong my character would say, “Incorrect.” I thought it would be fun to use math as the school subject for this project because math is one of my favorite subjects. I looked over my classmates projects and I especially liked Elan’s. I liked her project the most because I liked the background, character, font of the questions, and the questions themselves!  I liked the background and character particularly because I thought they matched up well. The overall environment felt like a teaching area and that made it feel realistic. Overall I really liked this project and it was very fun to do.

This week in computer tech class we were asked to make a “Music Video” however we like! I will be talking about Griffin Kong’s video or “Gk Music Video”. To start off I will be talking about what I liked about the project, I particularly liked how catchy the song was and how it matched with the background. It sounded like farm music which fit the background because the background was a farm. I also liked the 4 chicks walking and dancing, I felt like chicks also matched the farm environment this project had. Next I will be talking about what I liked in the animation! In the animation I rly liked how the chicks were walking and dancing perfectly synced with each other. It really made everything feel even and very smooth. I thought the music really matched the chicks movements and that made it much more fun to watch than  if the music didn’t match the chicks movement. Lastly I am going to talk about what I liked in the soundtrack! As I previously said, I like how the soundtrack is catchy and fits the movement of the chicks and fits the environment. However, I also enjoyed the song itself not just for how well it matches with the project but it really wanted to make you dance! Whenever you find songs like those you know it’s a good one.

This week in computer/ tech class we had to create an About Me project and practice are Tynker skills. In this blog post I’m going to talk about those two things, while practicing Programming 201 I completed activity’s that were about making your character do things like getting my character around objects and reaching certain points. The main reason I like Tynker is because there are many possibilities and you can be very creative with it. It’s almost like your own world you can control. I also think that sometimes it can be difficult to understand how all the different coding blocks work together but for the most part it is pretty well organized. One of the things I learned to do in Tynker is to program a character to do something after it gets touched, I though that was pretty cool.

Moving on to the About me project, I put a Christmas tree and candy cane to represent how much I like Christmas. I made them play festive music and sound effects when they got touched! I also included a picture of a Basketball spinning another basketball on it’s finger, this represented how much I love basketball. I made it so when the basketball is touched it makes a splash sound like a ball going through a net. I also put a picture of chicken wings that played happy music when touched to show how much I love chicken wings. I often used the block “When actor touched” to code. I incorporated that block from Programming 201 where we learned how to code with that block. I thought my project was super cool and I hope you do too!

Technology is something created by humans to solve a problem.

The object that I observed is an Ice Cube Tray and it is technology because it helps you carry around ice cubes. This solves a problem.

The problem that the Ice Cube Tray solves is holding ice cubes. For example it can carry more ice cubes than your hand and it is a convenient way to carry ice cubes. You don’t have to carry ice cubes in your hands because of this.

This object makes life better because you’re hands won’t get cold while carrying ice cubes and you can carry more ice cubes.

The Ice Cube Tray is made out of plastic.

Today while working on our maglev train my group realized that we had to much disk magnets on our track. There were four disk magnets on our track and we realized that we didn’t need any. We took out all of the disk magnets and a little bit before that we put on more strip magnets on the track so that each side of the track had two strip magnets on top of each other. This was all successful. We tried to add one more magnet on each side of the train so that there would be two strip magnets on each side. We thought it would even things out but it was unsuccessful. So we just took one strip magnet off from each side and it was successful.

While we were working, putting one more strip magnet on each side of the train was unsuccessful and we took off one strip from each side to make it successful. But what did we learn from our mistake? We learned that the train cannot be too heavy to levitate above the track and that the train magnets have to be lined up with the track magnets to be successful.

For our next time that we work on our maglev trains we want to improve the height of the levitation so that when we add weight to the train it will have a better chance of levitating.