Computer Science with Ms. Hansen

Another batch of fantastic portraits from my 5th grade students! These ones are in Ms. Gallagher’s homeroom class.

A few people have asked me how these paintings are made. Each student snapped a photo of themselves using the computer’s built-in camera and an application called Photo Booth. Art Rage is a computer painting program, like KidPix or Paint, except it gives a much more realistic painting experience. Oil paint can be blobbed onto the digital canvas and then pushed around and blended together with a palette knife. Students can choose from an art box chock full of colored pencils, pastels, paint, markers etc. I encouraged them throughout this project to experiment with all of the different tools, try everything, be creative and see what emerges!

Students used Art Rage’s “tracing” feature to import the photos of themselves into the program, then set their paint palette to “choose colors from tracing image.” From there, anywhere they touched their paint brush to the canvas, the brush put down paint in the exact same color as the photo underneath. Once the students filled the entire canvas with paint, they removed the tracing image and admired their stunning, impressionistic portraits.

Posted on November 6th, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: ArtRage, 5thGrade, student work | No Comments »

A new gallery of art rage portraits is online now! These ones are from Mr. Kass’ homeroom students. A few paintings were turned in without names, so if you don’t see yours in the gallery come talk to me and we’ll see if we can find it amongst the unclaimed pictures. This class did an exceptionally fine job on these portraits! Also, I’ve started an Art Rage gallery of fame in the computer room to showcase other stunning Art Rage creations.

Posted on November 1st, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: ArtRage, 5thGrade, student work | No Comments »

My sixth grade classes continue to study programming using Scratch. Each student created a game or an application (from scratch, so to speak…), and the (mostly) finished projects are available online on the Scratch Web site.
This week the students were thrilled to get a chance to start using scratch boards in their programming projects. Each scratch sensor board contains light and sound sensors, a push button and a slider and four ports for resistance sensors. With these sensor boards the students can create games and computer programs that respond to things that are happening outside the computer. To quote most of my sixth graders at once: “This is cool. This is SO cool.”

The Scratch sensor boards can be ordered online for $25 each, including shipping.

Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: Scratch, 6thGrade, student work | No Comments »

Dear 6th Grade Students,

We are deep into our computer programming unit using a new programming environment called Scratch. Scratch was developed at MIT to provide an easy and intuitive way for young people to create animations, interactive games and even basic software applications.  All of the code is in drag and drop “blocks” which fit together like puzzle pieces.

Here are some Scratch resources for you to use at home:

• Download Scratch for free at home
• Check out these videos about Scratch. We watched the intro video in class together.
• Scratch Cards are nifty little cheat sheets that teach one Scratch skill at a time.  I have a laminated set of these for us to use in class, but many kids have asked about getting a set at home.  You can print them out yourself from the link above.
• The Scratch Sensor Board plugs into the computer and lets your Scratch projects sense and respond to things that are going on outside of the computer.  Each board has a little slider and button on it, as well as a light sensor and a sound sensor (imagine programming a dancing sprite that dances when you sing to it!). We will have a classroom set of these, but if you want to buy one to use at home, they cost $25 including shipping and can be ordered here.
• Check out the “Featured Projects” section on the Scratch Web site to see what kinds of programs other people have made in Scratch.  All of the programs are published under a Creative Commons license–so if you see something you like, you can freely download it, read the code, change the code, and remake it into something new.

Posted on October 9th, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: Scratch, 6thGrade, Dear Students | No Comments »

Dear Students–

Now that the school year is well underway (eek!) and homework and projects are starting to pile up, lots of you have been asking me questions about how you can access your file server account from home. Some of you may not even realize that you CAN access your file server account from home. Well, you can! And it’s pretty easy! If you have a Mac at home, you connect the exact same way we connect at school (from the finder, click GO–>Connect to Server, then type in “files.ucls.uchicago.edu”, put in your name and password when it asks you for them, and boom! you’re in.

If you have a PC at home (not a Mac), the procedure is slightly different. Just follow these instructions and you’ll be in:

1.) Download and install a program called WinSCP. This is a secure FTP (file transfer protocol) program that will allow you to access your server folder, and transfer files back and forth from your home computer onto the file server and vice versa.

2.) When WinSCP is finished downloading and installing, open it up. A box will pop up asking you about session connection information. For hostname, type “files.ucls.uchicago.edu” put in your username (mine is rhansen, yours is probably your first initial and the first six letters of your last name) and password.

3.) Click “login.”

Once you’re connected you’ll see a window split down the middle. The right half shows your UCLS file server space - the “remote” system. The left half shows the files on your computer, the “local” system. You should be able to drag and drop any files between systems.

To get to public spaces (teacher’s dropboxes are located here in a folder called “faculty”), navigate the remote system to /volumes/SAN/Data/Public

That’s it! It’s a great idea to use your file server space to store papers, projects and other important schoolwork. The file server is backed up (so if it happens to crash your stuff won’t be lost) AND you can get to it from any computer in the world, as long as it’s hooked up to the Internet. That means you can start writing your paper at school, save it in your folder, work on it some more at the library, edit it at home, and then pop into the computer lab at school the next day to print out the final draft. Pretty neat.

PS Have you practiced your typing twice this week using Custom Typing.com? For 6th graders I will be checking on Monday to see if you’ve completed your typing homework (two practice sessions each week, at least 15 minutes each).  5th graders, I’ll run the report on your typing homework in the morning the day I see you in class. Remember to use the home row! 

Posted on September 28th, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: Dear Students | 4 Comments »