Computer Science with Ms. Hansen

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of people are coming to this website after searching on Google for “Scratch Projects” or “Scratch project ideas.”  Right now in class my sixth grade students are just starting to make their final Scratch projects– each student has about seven class periods to develop and program an original game or application.

Here are some of the projects they are making:

A fishing game where a fisherman has to try to net tuna fish without also netting dolphins.

A chase game where a mouse has to try to get to the cheese without getting caught by the cat.

A Star Trek game where the Starship Enterprise shoots at an enemy ship and must destroy it before it gets destroyed itself.

A remake of the classic game, PacMan.

A remake of the classic game, Frogger.

A Scratch version of the Magic 8 ball toy, which can answer any question with one of twenty different answers.

A game where a thief needs to break into a building and make off with the money before the time limit runs out or the police arrive.

A basketball game in which the user needs to press the button on the PicoBoard at just the right moment to get the basketball to fly into the hoop. Press the button too early and the ball falls short, press the button too late and you’ll overshoot the basket.

A game where a hot dog vendor needs to correctly fill orders for hot dogs with specific combinations of toppings as quickly as possible.

An apple picking game where the user must harvest different varieties of apples off of trees.

A “Why did the chicken cross the road?” game where the user needs to guide a chicken across a busy intersection without letting it get flattened.

Posted on November 11th, 2009 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: 6thGrade, Scratch | No Comments »

I advise the middle school newspaper, also known as the Jammed Locker.  This year participation has been so high that I’ve requested an iCart of laptops to be delivered to the computer lab to supplement the 25 iMacs I have in the computer lab.

On Thursday afternoons the student journalists stream into the lab, drop their backpacks and jackets into a huge mound in front of the door, and get to work writing, editing, and laying out articles for the paper.

A student journalist hard at work on a newspaper article for the Jammed Locker.

Posted on October 29th, 2009 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: 5thGrade, 6thGrade | No Comments »

The new version of iMovie is significantly different than the previous version, and it includes some great new features (picture in picture! Shaky video reduction!). To learn more, check out Apple’s series of video tutorials on iMovie ‘09. While you’re there, you can also watch great video tutorials for iPhoto, GarageBand, and the rest of the iLife suite. Cool!

Posted on September 28th, 2009 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Both my sixth grade classes and my fifth grade classes are well into the Keyboarding for Kids program right now. There are a few main points about the goals of the program that I want to clarify.

Sixth grade students work hard at learning to type.

First of all, the ultimate goal of this exercise is that each student will be able to type quickly and effortlessly, without laboring to find each key or tiring quickly because of using an inefficient method.  Each kid started the program with a different level of proficiency, so it doesn’t make sense to compare students to one another–as I tell the kids every day, it’s not a race!

That said, the secondary goal is to have each student finish the keyboarding program. There are 64 lessons total, covering each letter, capital letter, and the more common punctuation marks.  For the fifth graders, this means completing approximately two lessons each week of school. For the sixth graders, whose time with  me is only one quarter long, this means completing approximately five lessons each week. These are guidelines to make sure that each student is on track to finish by the end of the year, not hard and fast weekly requirements.  Some students have zoomed way ahead in the program, and some have gotten a slower start and are gradually picking up the pace.

As of this, the third week of school, I would like each fifth grader to be on lesson six or beyond, and each sixth grader to be on lesson fifteen or beyond.

For students who are behind– please don’t stress! Stress inhibits learning and won’t help make you a better typist. Try to find time to practice your keyboarding at home a little bit more so that you can catch up and get back on track for finishing on time and achieving your goal of fast, easy typing.

Posted on September 25th, 2009 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: 5thGrade, 6thGrade, homework, typing | No Comments »

This week Ms. Putman and I introduced a new keyboarding program to all current fourth and fifth grade students.  The program is called Keyboarding for Kids, from Ellsworth Publishing.  We introduced the program now so that students who want (or need) to work on improving their keyboarding skills can use the program over the summer to help improve their typing speed and accuracy before the new school year starts.

The program can be accessed from any computer, Mac or PC, as long as it has internet access and a web browser.  Simply go to KeyboardingOnline.com, and log in with the school name: “univschool”. Students should know their personal login names.

This is not homework! Nobody is required to work on this program over the summer. However, if you would like to become a faster and more accurate typist, I recommend that you spend some time working on your keyboarding this summer.  I would like to see rising fifth grade students complete the first five lessons by the first day of school.  For rising sixth graders, completing the first 23 lessons is a good goal.

At school, I sometimes cover a student’s hands with a cardboard box that I’ve chopped up with scissors so that it fits over the keyboard but leaves room for kid’s hands to reach in and type. Students find it very disconcerting at first to type with their hands covered, but they very quickly adapt to touch-typing without looking at their hands, and speed and accuracy rates improve very quickly. Look around at home and see if you can find a box that you could use for this.

Please get in touch if you have any questions or concerns regarding this new program. I would be happy to email the handout that goes along with Keyboarding for Kids to parents or students who may have misplaced the sheet I passed out in class last week.

Posted on June 9th, 2009 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »