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
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.
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
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:(…
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:)
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.
I just found this…I wish it had been on the Hello World lesson page, I’ve been struggling for a loooong time trying to figure out why my OLED board didn’t work and made multiple posts, trying to get help. It appears to be working now that the colored wires are rearranged.
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)? For 4th grade we could use this lesson for 4-PS4-3- Generate and compare multiple solutions that use patterns to transfer information.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful? I would need to make sure they had the correct picture of the OLED wiring set up.
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 would use the Guided Release Model. I would do an example with them. Then they would do an example with me on their Chromebooks sitting next to their partner. If the partners felt good about moving on to working on their own, they could be released to do that while others stayed with me.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like? Students success looks like them trying and struggling and ultimately figuring it our and feeling successful. I would be there to help once it becomes too frustrating.
I agree the wire set up could be a challenge. The colour coding would help for sure, but the delicate nature of the pins could be a challenge - depending on the class.
I like your idea of students working in groups. Hopefully that would reduce the demands on tech support/the teacher.
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 would be an excellent introduction activity to how to code. The use of the sensors ties in really well with the space unit and monitoring different variables on the ISS (our grade 9 science unit in Ontario). Also, incorporating any electrical circuitry ties in with the electricity unit (grade 9 in Ontario). In Ontario, the science curriculum is being updated currently. The elementary curriculum for grades 1 to 8 was just released last week and now includes coding in each grade beginning at grade 1. There was no coding in the previous elementary curriculum last revised in 2008. If this is any indication for the secondary curriculum, I suspect there will be coding added to the grade 9 and 10 science curriculum that will hopefully be released soon as we are expected to teach it in September 2022!
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
Parts of this lesson where my students would need extra support to be successful would be the initial set up of the drivers and components. Ensuring that all devices can adequately support the driver needed. This was the part I found most challenging. Once the driver issues were resolved (I think they were at least as I had the Seeeduino functioning as described), it was fun experimenting with the code. Either a tech support person could help the teacher with this before hand or if students are involved, very direct explicit instructions on how to do this with accompanying step-by-step visual supports.
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?
My role would be to start the lesson, verbally explain the task, and provide this website with the step-by-step instructions. Then, I would circulate and help students troubleshoot any issues students may be having as well as challenging students to continue exploring if they have achieved the required task (i.e. writing your name in the centre of the screen). I feel this activity would be best done in small groups so that students have more peer support. This would also be necessary as our school would not have enough school computers for each student to use individually.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your student’s role during the class. What does “student success” look like?
Student success looks like them engaged and actively participating in the activities. This will look different for different students. Some students will finish with their name centred on the screen (minimum requirement), but others that are more comfortable with coding can proceed to more challenging activities. Which works really well with this setup because there is always “Ready for next adventure?” at the bottom when you finish one activity. From my limited observations so far, it seems to further the learning with each next adventure.
