This is a great introductory assignment. I would use this as a group project to review vocabulary (have one student code in a vocab word then show to another student that would have to say the definition out loud then switch). I could also use it as a way to teach problem solving and perseverance. I have some students that would need extra support with reading. During this lesson I would be walking around the room checking in with groups having them explain to me which part of the assignment you are on as well as answering questions. Student success in this lesson would be experiencing both success and failure while working through the steps. I would want to see my students exhibiting perseverance and trying more than one way to solve the problem should something arise.
Great ideas here. If you go to the bottom of the lesson then there’s a link to the lesson guide for teachers that show suggested vocab words are well!
I really like this lesson as an introductory coding lesson for the students. I think trial and error in coding is such a valuable way to learn. We can teach kids what different commands do. But, if they discover it themselves then they are far more likely to understand it.
I could also see using the portion of the lesson where you try to center your name in a math setting. It’s a good review of graphing. Students could also do some simple math to determine accurate coordinates for centering text of different lengths.
This is a great introductory lesson. My students would enjoy the challenge of changing their name. It was gratifying to change the display and it was not so difficult they would give up immediately.
I think this activity is extremely important especially for those students that are getting to know how the equipment works as well as line code. The fact that it introduces the students to line code but does not overwhelm them with having to change multiple lines is a plus for students. I also thought it would be neat to give the students a definition for a vocabulary word and they had to display the word that matches the definition.
As a facilitator my role is to give the students a chance to explore and then share what they have discovered and make a real world connections.
I think for this lesson I would find a couple of strong student to teach it to those that are struggling.
I wanted to share with you some updated instructions for the Hello World! Week #1 AstroSchool experiment that will be helpful as you engage with the experiment (I’ll be updating the experiment page as well as the community forum as well):
Instructions for Hardware Setup:
Using the universal grove cable, plug OLED Display into Seeeduino Microcontroller using one of the bottom two ports (i.e. a port labeled, “SCL” “SDA” “VCC” and “GND” [not labeled with “RX,” etc.])
Using the Grove 4-pin Female Jumper to Grove 4 pin Conversion Cable, plug the OLED into the Seeeduino Microcontroller using the second of the bottom two ports labeled with “SCL,” “SDA,” “VCC,” and “GND.” Make sure each wire is plugged in as follows:
i. Black wire: GND
ii. Red wire: VCC
iii. Yellow wire: SCL
iv. White wire: SDA
Description automatically generated
Plug the USB cable into the Seeduino’s micro USB port
Plug the USB cable into your computer’s USB port or use battery.
Hi Lindsey (hopefully this is the correct spot for this)
I can get the OLED to say Hello World.
I can get the OLED to say Hello
When I change it to “Joanne”, the code comes back with a runtime error.
“fatal error: runtime: out of memory”
What’s going on?
@arcandj, Can you send me a picture of the code you are using that gives you the error? lindsey@dreamup.org
I just posted a similar answer on another thread, but in case anyone is following this one and not the other one - we were able to duplicate this error and believe it is fixed now.
If anyone is still having similar issues, please let us know.
Jeff Trotman
DreamUp
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
This lesson is pretty similar to what I normally teach on arduino boards week 1-2, so it fits really well
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
They would need a little extra help with phrasing and punctuation
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson?
Just introduce it and keep an eye out for frustrated kids. Sliding around the room looking over shoulders works well
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
Either getting the code to work, or being able to explain at what point it’s breaking down. Bonus points if they know why
Exactly. I would love to see the segmented displays stuff- haven’t tried that
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
In Grade 6 math in Ontario, the curriculum includes correcting code to meet criteria. There is also a section of the math curriculum to do with socio emotional learning and how students use positive affirmations to motivate through challenges.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
For some reason, the error box that says there is difficulty connecting to the live server pops up randomly and then the code doesn’t load. I need to figure out a procedure for when this happens because I found it quite frustrating.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson?
If there is away to correct the live server issue, my students could do this as a guided inquiry and my role would be support and encouragement (and celebrating). Having the extension ideas on cards in my back pocket would help provide extensions (such as “could you make the second line say a positive message?” )
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
At this stage and given the frustrations I had with the program, student success will be getting it to say what they want it to!
Hi there! I have been trying to get things rolling this morning and am not able to get the OLED display to light up. I did switch the wires the way you have pictured above and I was hoping that it would light up but alas it did not:(…
Any suggestions?
It seems to work now that I uploaded the Hello World Code:) I saw that someone had posted this so tried it out and it is working! Slowly waking up this morning…
Hopefully it’s OK to comment on both the Getting Started and Hello World here. I had a few hiccups getting things started and when I did, I wasn’t very clear on what I was measuring. The Hello World Display experiment was more successful. The altering of the text size, text content and placement reminded me of old HTML courses I had to take in the early days of web site development.
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum: Basic coding is part of our ADSD curriculum in BC.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful? My class is pretty low and they would need some supports in reading the code, setting things up, and other basic tech support.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson? I normally go through 3 steps with my class. One is exploration where they play around for a bit. Then I do a full class lesson. Then I switch to individual support. Frustration is a big issue in my class (which then leads to lack of engagement). So I have to constantly play with letting them discover things on their own and giving them enough to be able to do so.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like? I think success would be having students understand there are parts of code that stay consistent, and parts where variables are introduced. Having them get their name to pop up would be cool too.
Within our STEM curriculum, students get to experience coding and robotics so this would fit well with that part of my curriculum. Depending on grade level, some students would need help understanding the coordinate plane in order to center the text on the screen. Again, depending on grade level (I teach grades 4-8), I would probably do some step-by-step direct instruction with my younger students, but allow older students to work on their own. Student success to me is student engagement. I would feel the lesson was a success if the students enjoyed the lesson and were excited to learn more about the topic.
Unfortunately, I think my screen is broken as there is a large white block on the screen and the display is not very bright. Also, during the lesson the screen became extremely hot.
I would agree that the lessons could be tweaked just a bit to make them more user friendly. Also, I wish this feed would put the newest comments at the top instead of the bottom. 
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum?
I could use this as an intro activity in my Science 7 classes or STEAM 7 & 8. Showing the kids examples of coding that is different from the block based coding most of the platforms I use so this would be a fun extenstion.
I think in some of our projects we do with students like the Thermos Project and Garden Project this lesson would find some use to be extended to help them collect data. I have a couple of TowerGardens that we use in grow tents with two different LED grow lights. It would be neat to collect the data from the inside of each tent - luminosity and temp - and compare the conditions as part of their growing experiments.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
The basics of starting out - exploring the circuit board and sensors - hooking the little wires up - learning how to have a delicate touch with some of the connectors (I find them quite fragile) would be where I would invest some energy to help them see the potential. I found the lesson steps easy to follow and the questions were at a good level for most of my students.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher do during this lesson?
After the set-up tutorials I would let them explore as I did and see how far they could go. I love asking at the end of this kind of activity for them to discuss real life scenarios where we could use this kind of sensor data - they have great imaginations.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
Completing the guided tutorial/questions with each lesson - Getting Started and OLED display. Also one of our outcomes in STEAM is the Ability to problem solve so I watch to see how they work through the little snags that happen along the way. I had to do a bit of that this morning when the OLED display did not light up right away as I anticipated:)
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Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
I have my Business class, my Engineering Class, and my Technology class working on a farming project. They are trying to grow plants under artificial light using different germination techniques. I can see my students using a board like this to monitor the conditions while seeds are growing (UV light, temperature, and luminosity). -
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
I would say they need to know the basic of coding because it is a huge code (advanced). They will also need to know the parts of the Seeduino. If they are curious like their teacher, they will probably try to run this on the Arduino software, I tried and I couldn’t because the Ardusat library is not installed. I tried to look for the library and I couldn’t find it, so I am assuming that these activities are only for running with the Run on Arduino button on the modules. They need to know what is the meaning of declared, what the void set up does, what the void loop does, what is a library, and how to install one. -
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I will facilitate how to plug the wires because it can be tricky and how to get the wires unplugged carefully to avoid damage to the Seeduino. Also, how to move the Because Learning board to change the data sensor displayed on the OLED. The Business class needs to master how to create charts and diagrams using MS Excel. This project will provide a meaningful data set that can be used in a variety of real-world scenarios to create those charts. I will facilitate the creation of charts to collect the data at certain times to compare for further analysis. -
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
I will probably have the students work in partners or teams of three no more than that. Students would be encouraged to describe what is being measured. Also, where the measurements are coming from (which sensor). I really like the tutorial because it is a friendly way to be familiar with the code and where to do the changes to display what you want to display in the OLED, so I will put them to take the tutorial and answer the questions. I will say they will be successful if they can:
• Plug the wires correctly
• Connect the Seeduino and Run the program correctly
• For the huge code with all the sensors, I will say they will be successful if they can create a chart to collect/record the data displayed on this activity that is related to their project.
@Joshua.Robbins I am also doing a farming project with artificial light. We are trying to mimic the Veggie Chamber at the ISS. I can foresee my students collecting the luminosity and temperature data with this board. And yes, wires are a concern.