"Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time."
– Bill Gates

Mr. Kaitz

7th grade programming and coding occurs 2nd trimester and uses the Hummingbird Coding Kit in conjunction with the Scratch blockly-style programming language.

Hummingbird is designed to enable engineering and robotics that involve the making of robots, kinetic sculptures, and animatronics built out of a combination of kit parts and crafting materials.

Combined with very easy-to-use software environments like Scratch, Snap!, the CREATE Lab Visual Programmer, and Ardublock, Hummingbird provides a great way to introduce kids to robotics and engineering with construction materials that they are already familiar with. At the same time, Hummingbird continues to provide new challenges by allowing programming in the Arduino environment, Python, Java, and Processing, and by supporting Raspberry Pi.

The Hummingbird kit was designed at Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab, in a program called Arts & Bots. The research projects that led to the Hummingbird used "participatory design", which means that they deeply involved both students and teachers at all stages of the design process. ENJOY!

Assignments

Lesson 1 Scratch Review - Students will review Scratch basic programming functions while applying following learning objectives use problem solving and math skills, use XY coordinates to move sprites, incorporate movement with images, alternate between different sprites costumes, incorporating time and motion, and import and record sounds.

Lesson 2 Scratch Review Cont. - Create animation of Sprite moving across stage - character scroll. Use problem solving and math skills, use XY coordinates to move sprites, incorporate movement with images, alternate between different sprites costumes, incorporating time and motion, and import and record sounds.

Lesson 3 Bug Fixes - Students will look at lines of code and figure out the where the bugs are and how to fix them. This will help them gain a better understanding of code and how it works, strengthen their ability to find bugs in code and fix them correctly, and create simple but robust coding.

Lesson 4 Scratch Review Cont. - Students will create/design a maze. Learning objectives are being able to identify some common design elements of a game and use Scratch and its functions to create all the elements.

Lesson 5 Intro To Hummingbird w/Scratch - This lesson will first show students how to use the Hummingbird outputs, the lights and motors. These components are called outputs because programs in Scratch send commands to them to make something happen. Then students will learn how to use the Hummingbird inputs, the sensors that provide information to the robot about its environment.

Lesson 6 Module 1: Single Color LEDs - Students will learn to use the lights, which are also called LEDs. The Hummingbird kit contains two types of LEDs, single color LEDs and tri-color LEDs. Single color LEDs have two wires, while tri-color LEDs have four wires.

Lesson 7 Module 2: Tri-Color LEDs - Students will program a Tri-Color LED light, create a continuous loop cycle, and create “off” code.

Lesson 8 Module 3: Motors - Students will learn about the three different motors included with the Hummingbird Kit, vibration, servo, and gear, and how to use them.

Lesson 9 Group Project - In groups of 2-3, students will create a project of an external robot or machine that works in conjunction with the language programming from the Scratch interface.