Teaching EasyLogo: December 2013

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Animating the sports car

In chapter 7, we deal with animating an object on the screen. In one example, we used the sports car we created previously to make it move from the left to the right of the screen. The animation shows in the animated gif below.

Drawing a sports car

In the end of chapter 3, we created a sports car. We used dots as the tires and driver. The idea was inspired from a teacher's exercise which was available as an online publication at Issuu.

Sprites - Enthusiastic man

In chapter 8, we introduce the real magic of animation, which is to make one object to change its shape. As an example, we used the human figure that we created previously, to move from the left to the right and moving its hands up and down on each step. We thought the human figure, as a sprite, consisting of two different images, one with the hands down and one with the hands up.

The animation of this enthusiastic man, is shown in the animated gif below.

Drawing the american flag

In chapter 6, we show how to draw the flag of the United States of America. The procedure we used was to break it in many smaller parts for the stripes, canton and stars, and in the end to combine them together. In the animated gif below you can see the final process to draw the flag, step by step.

Apple tree

In chapter 4, we introduced the use of colors, and in the end we created an apple tree, using two methods to create the apples inside the leaves. In the first method when we changes position to place a new apple we were exchanging the pen color so to not leave a red trace. Later, we introduced the forward with pen up command which helped us to solve easier the problem. The visual steps on both methods are identical and are shown in the animated gif below.

Falling apple

In chapter 9, we explain how to create an animation using backgrounds two, meaning to have multiple objects on the screen at same time. Actually, at first we presented the main idea, and then we encourage kids to discover by themselves a way to make such an animation in EasyLogo.

As an example, we used an apple falling from a tree. We used two methods to achieve this animation, the first one was to solve it as a sprite, and the second was to paste with the correct color the previous image during the animation. The final result, using the sprite method is shown in the image below.

Slowing down a car in tree road

In chapter 9, in the final section we created an animation in which a car was slowing down in a tree road. In the image below you can see the final animation.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Book Description

If you're just getting started with EasyLogo programming, this is the book you want - whether you're a computer science teacher or a first-time learner. EasyLogo is a simplified Logo language which is becoming a popular educational programming language used by many first-time learners in classrooms and homes around the world.

Teaching EasyLogo covers all the features of EasyLogo, and shows how kids can learn fundamental computer programming concepts as they create their very own drawings and simple animations. The learning method is focused on discovering the features step by step and solving problems with the current available amount of features on the students hands at that time. Gradually students through fun programming challenges will create basic shapes, and later will be able to build more complex shapes using repeat loops and procedures. In the end, they will use different methods to create simple animations.

This book is approximately 18000 words long, contains 46 figures and is about 121 kindle pages. The page count was measured using the smallest font on a Kindle Paperwhite 3G.

Teaching EasyLogo [Kindle Edition] is available to purchase from Amazon (chose the closest to your region):

Teaching EasyLogo