Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Programming a Switch

I've been working with RobotC for a bit now and I've come to realize something about the way switches can be programmed in Logo. Logo allows you to write this implied boolean equation with if switcha [a, on] or if not swticha [a, off], while boolean equations are true or false or 0 or 1 in other programming languages. So I tried programming a switch with if switcha = 1 [a, on] and it worked just as well. I much prefer that approach because of its similarity to most other programming languages.

Learning Through Discovery


One of my 9th grade students was making an important discovery, an instance of self-guided learning with the cricket logo console. She had 3 separate procedures that controlled different aspects of her dj robot--one spun the turntables, one set the dj's arms in motion, and one displayed a message on the LED display. She hadn't been taught how to crate a main procedure that calls all of the other three, so she was typing the name of each in the command center and beaming them to the cricket in turn to make them start up individually. I thought that was a very inventive way to get it to do all three of its procedures without knowing the 'right' way. Of course when I showed her the usefulness of a main procedure she got it right away because it was immediately useful.