In Microworlds this term we have been exploring the wonders of Microworlds. We have been looking at regular shapes. I will be informing you on regular trapeziums.

A trapezium is a parallelogram which means it has 4 sides. It is also is a regular trapezium which means it is symmetrical. It can only be folded one way and that is down the middle. This is a copy of the program and my end result. When we were making the trapezium we ha to measure the external angle, not the internal. And for that we had had to turn using the turtles head, not its bottom. I had trouble doing that because I kept on measuring the internal angle. the external is the outside angle and the internal is the inside angle.

1 lt 90

2 fd 100

3 rt 125

4 fd 100

5 rt 55

6 fd 100

7 rt 125

8 fd 120

I was very surprised when the program that I made worked. Eve told me one brick because I was really confused and stuck. With the first brick done I was feeling really confident. Thankfully it made its was to the red piece if paper and stopped. Because we did the go forward turn around and come back challenge I knew how to make it turn and come back. Its a little bit strange though, because mine is going really slow but that doesn’t matter because it finally worked. The program isn’t very hard as you can see. I think that the hardest part was to make it go forward and sense the paper because before it just went forward and ignored the part about sensing the paper. I am really happy that it worked because I am a new person to programing robots.

CHALLENGE 2: Your robot is a baseball player.

The robot has to run from one base to the next.

Oh no! She’s going to be tagged out.

So he has to turn around and run back to the previous base!

What should you do?

• Program the code
• Test it out

Explain our code.

This was the first time Lena and I have actually started to program the robot because our robot didn’t work. Bronte told us a brick which made the robot go forward and that was all we needed to know. Now that we know how to make the robot go forward we had to find out how to make it turn and come back to us. We figured out this part on the brick called rotations. It made the robot turn.When we combined those two things together we made the robot go forward, turn around and finally come back to us. The moving bricks are located in the green section. Each section has its each colour, that way it is more easier to recognise. You select the motor which makes your robot go forward, then match it up with the little arrow. After selecting a couple of them and placing them in a row you can make the robot go forward. Then on the last brick change the little brick in the brick called rotations. You then change the number to a negative number in order for it to turn. We chose -45. Then we added more forward bricks until finally we had a robot which went forward, turned around and came back to the starting position.

What was challenging?

I think that the challenging part of this program was to find out how to make the robot turn. After a lot of experimenting we found out that you had to change the little box called rotations to the number of turns you wanted your robot to turn. I was also pretty challenging to find out how to make the robot go forward as well because we had no idea what each brick did and what its purpose is.

What do you notice about how the robot moves? Which parts? How?

I noticed that if your motor doesn’t work then your wheels wont work because the wheels are connected to the motor. The motor is basically where the power for the wheels come from. When you download a program a little message is sent to the motors from the brick telling it what its directions are so it can then pass on that information to the wheels.

Could it be done a different way?

I think there are a lot more different ways you can do this program, and any other program. I’m sure that if you ask every group nearly all of them will have a different program. The way Lena and I did it is simply the way that we chose to do it. Everyone has different brains and they all work differently.

Last time I was talking about our elevator. Lena and I have finished building it and had dismantled it. I think that the elevator was the easiest simple machine there was to build because it often repeated most of the steps. After taking a picture of it we dismantled it. I thought that taking it apart would be fun but it wasn’t, in fact it was very difficult to take is apart because the connects are very connected. When you’ve connected something it is very difficult to take it if. We also had to build a model out of Lego. This time Lena and I decided to build a carousel. It wasn’t very hard because we had made Lego before in term 1. We didn’t get to finish it though because we ran out of time. On Friday we will be doing either Arduino or Humming birds.

How did this activity help you to get to know your classmates? I think that this activity was a good way of finding things out about people that I didn’t really know about. I was really surprised when I found out some little things that I didn’t even know about my friends!

Was it difficult to think of things to draw?  For me it wasn’t really hard to think of things to draw because my topics were really simple. Something about the drawing that was difficult was the front cover. After thinking for a while I did a mixture of things like smiley faces, fireworks, stars and this really big face with a tongue poking out.

Did you discover anything about yourself? I discovered that if I think about it really hard I can do really good drawings. I was amazed buy how my Me Book turned out to be like in the end. I think my best drawing was of the pizza. Other that that I don’t think there was anything else I surprised myself with.

Dear Matron Rose,

I’m so happy that you wrote back to me cos I thought you wouldn’t. Have you send my letter to my real mum? If not, why? Do you think they should baptise me? Why didn’t you answer any of these questions? Is there something I should know? Are you keeping a secret from me? Now, enough of that talk. Did you know that I still write in my diary nearly every day? Oh and by the way I’ve made a new friend called Toni. She’s from Italy, the reason why where friends is because everyone is calling her a dago or somethin like people are calling me a abo. I gotta go now cos Ma B is calling me for dinner. It was lovely to hear from you. Write to me soon!

Mary Talence

For the last couple of weeks in design 5A have been working in simple machines. Now first things first, let me tell you what a simple machine is. A simple machine is a basically a simple machine or tool like a screw, lever, inclined plane, wedge, wheel and axle and a pulley. Those are the common simple machines. Now let me tell you what we have been doing. Lena and I ( Lena is my partner) first had to build six simple machines, they were the ones that I mentioned earlier. When we had done that we had to do a page on it about what each simple machine is called and what its purpose is. We had to do that in our design book. Finally after that we got to make something off our choice which had to have a simple machine in it. In the end we decided to build an elevator. It took a lot of planning and a lot of things. We first thought off building a carousel but afterwards we thought off building the elevator because the carousel looked too complicated and it needed heaps of stuff. We still have a little bit left to go because we spent most off the lesson doing the simple machines investigation rather than doing the actual project. The things that we used to make the elevator are a little bit like Lego but their not, their like a smaller version of Lego. Lets see next time how we get along with building our elevator.