Today in EDCI 336 we were given the opportunity to practice our basic coding skills from a variety of beginner coding websites. Rich McCue was our presenter for the day and linked us to his website to learn about the topic.

I first tried Scratch earlier in the semester and was able to create this small project (below) for a potential Technology Inquiry Project. I spent roughly 3 hours navigating the website and watching tutorial videos until I became competent enough to put something of use together. The application is designed for younger students and it limited in its functions which I found frustrating. The scope of use is not advanced enough for much professional purposes but I enjoyed the challenge of extending my knowledge and practicing a new skill.

 

The second application was Grasshopper where I worked on completing the tutorial. I found this application less exciting than Scratch or Hour of Code because the products of the tutorial weren’t as creative and I had no choice in what I was creating given the time constraints. I built some flags and changed variables within the coding. It felt more like coding because I was able to type in text rather than drag pre-set code into the workspace. I think in my beginner capacity this was detrimental to my experience because it was more complicated than I needed and didn’t catch my interest. I quickly moved to another website

 

Finally, I tried my luck at Hour of Code. This gave me a lot of flexibility for what I wanted to learn. I took a 10 step tutorial on making a flappy bird game and was able to make alterations to the backgrounds, characters, point schemes, speeds, and gravity. This was a lot of fun and upon completion granted me a certificate of completion that I could print off