Creative Computing Project – Final Report

PSC-IT and ISTE-E Standards Addressed in the Project

6.2/6b Managing Technology & Learning
Candidates manage the use of technology and student learning strategies in a variety of
environments such as digital platforms, virtual environments, hands-on makerspaces, or in the
field. (PSC-IT 6.2, ISTE-E 6b)

6.3/6c Design & Computational Thinking

Candidates create learning opportunities that challenge students to use a design process and/or
computational thinking to innovate and solve problems. (PSC-IT 6.3, ISTE-E 6c)

6.4/6d Creativity
Model and nurture creativity and creative expression to communicate ideas, knowledge, or
connections. (PSC-IT 6.4, ISTE-E 6d)

In this document, you will reflect on the implementation of your Creative Computing Project.
This project could be part of your normal teaching or part of an extracurricular activity in either
a formal (k-12 school) or informal (library, community center, etc.) learning setting. Projects
should include some type of computation (e.g., Scratch, Makecode, another programming
language, or CS Unplugged Activity).

Suggestions include (but are not limited to):

o Teaching digital storytelling with Scratch
o Doing a CS Unplugged activity to teach about the steps of an algorithm
o Using the Makecode website to teach block-based coding
o Use your SparkFun Inventor’s kit to teach students how to breadboard (e.g., make their
first LED blink and/or control the servomotor.)
o Creating a robotic pet

This activity could be done with a whole class or a small number of students depending on your
teaching environment.
Name: Jamie Lampkins (Team Teaching with Alisha Impellizzeri)

Grade level: 4th and 5th Grade

Subject(s): Math and Computer Science

Focus Standards:
Computational Thinker CSS.CT.3-5.5: Develop and employ strategies for understanding and
solving problems in ways that use the power of technological methods to develop and test
solutions.

MGSE5.G.2: Represent real world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first
quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of
the situation.

Date of implementation: April 14, 2022

Description of Your Creative Computing Project

I worked with Alisha Impellizzeri and the after-school students at her school. We had 4 students
participate: one 4th-grade girl and three 5th-graders (2 girls and 1 boy). Although we did the
same lesson with the same kids, we completed the documentation independently. We
discussed doing scratch originally but wanted to get away from the kids being on the computer,
so we decided to show computer science and computational thinking/algorithms sans
computer! I was inspired by a few of the videos we watched in class. One with the teacher
having the students direct each other on how to brush their teeth, and another with the
teacher making a PB & J sandwich with her students' (not so direct) directions. I found that
hilarious, and teaching the importance of clear and thoughtful directions is a great skill to have
in all fields.

The lesson started with me giving Alisha not-so-great directions on ice and adding springs to an
easter cookie. My directions were standard directions, such as “place the cookie on the table
and put pink icing on the cookie,” but Alisha followed these directions literally and just rubbed
the unopened icing pack on the cookie. This got a rise out of the kids and got them engaged.
We discussed the importance of clear directions and see if the students could give us better
step-by-step directions on how to ice the cookie. Then, we will complete the CS unplugged
activity of KidBots. Here, a student (bot) will be an object on an 8x8 grid, and another student
(developer) will create a “program” to give directions on how to get to another object; the bot
then follows the program written by the developer.

Items: cookies, icing, sprinkles, plastic knives, paper towels, markers to draw the grid, and a
ball.
Use of Technology and Student Learning Strategies (ISTE-E 6b)
This section should document how you managed the use of technology and student learning
strategies as part of your Creative Computing Project.

ISTE Portfolio Questions

1. What rules, guidelines, and parameters, regarding the use of technology, do you have
for your learners when they are working independently in alternative classroom
settings?

Generally, I would expect my students to be examples of great digital citizens. This

includes staying safe online (no personal info or private passwords given out etc.), not
bullying, staying on approved websites, and remaining on task. This project was offline,
and without technology, so some of the above rules did not apply. However, with all
lessons, staying on task and being respectful to peers and instructors are required.

2. Do you guide learners to reach out to their peers for support and troubleshooting?

For this project, I expected students to ask a peer for guidance first, and if the peer was
not able to help, then they could come to me for guidance. There were 2 developers, so
they discussed with each other. The learners naturally exchanged dialog and assisted
each other with the correct “code” and descriptions for decorating the cookies.

3. What ways do/can they troubleshoot their needs, independently?

The students were able to mentally/visually test run their program. They were not able
to physically run their program until it was time to test as a group. Once we ran the
program, one of the student bots did not reach the desired object. She had the
opportunity to rewrite her program.

4. How do you manage the use of technology in these alternative classroom settings?

Students did not use actual technology for this lesson. However, for future lessons,
students typically have their own devices and are able to use technology at the
appropriate times. It’s imperative to teach expectations early, especially about staying
on task and on the approved websites.

Design Process (ISTE-E 6c)

In this section, you should document the five (5) steps of the design process that you used as
part of your creative computing project. Design processes could include:
• Creative Learning Spiral (Imagine, Create, Play, Share, Reflect),
• Creative Play (Inspire, Imagine, Create, Play Share),
• Engineering Design Process (Ask/Define, Understand, Plan, Create, and Improve), or
• Design Thinking (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test)
ISTE Portfolio Question

1. How do you implement a recognized design-thinking process into your instruction?

For this assignment, I used the Creative Play design process. This was implemented by having
the students create design books like the one for our cardboard design challenge (See Figure 1
in artifacts). I focused on describing the expectations for each step.

• Inspire: Building engagement with the cookie challenge between the two teachers.
o I gave Ms. Impellizzeri purposely vague instructions on decorating my cookie.
She followed them literally. For example, I said to put sprinkles on the cookie,
and she put the unopened pack of sprinkles on the cookie. The kids caught on
very quickly and verbally joined in to help me provide more detailed instructions.
At this stage, we asked the students to write some observations related to the
activity in their design journals (see Figure 2 in artifacts).
• Imagine: Having the students join in and help design a program to ice the cookie
correctly.
o After verbally discussing the importance of clear directions, the students wrote
down the remaining steps to decorate the cookie. We then shared this
information and discussed what an algorithm is in computer
science/programming.
• Create: Create a program to maneuver through the 8x8 grid to a specific object.
o Students create a program using the given computer language. This algorithm
was written in their journals (see Figures 3, 4, and 5 in artifacts).
• Play: Run the program they created (multiple times if needed)
o Teachers then read the program for the “bot” to run. We had one run flawlessly,
and the other had some hiccups. One of our coders. Didn’t follow the language,
and the tester (the person reading the code) didn’t read it as the coder intended.
This was great because it allowed for conversations about different
programming languages.
• Share: Share their cookie program with others and reflect on how it relates to
algorithms that a computer follows.
o We discussed the assignment and decorated our cookies. A couple of the topics
we discussed were the importance of following the given code. Also, how the
“bot’s” start position matters and impacts the written code
(see Figure 5 in artifacts).
Evidence of one or more computational artifacts (ISTE-E 6c)
This section should provide evidence of one or more computation artifacts developed as part the
implementation of the Creative Computing Project. This evidence should include one or more
photos of students project and a written description.

Figure 1: Design Journal for Figure 2: Inspire page of student’s

workbook after the teacher-to- Figure 3: Sample code on
the kids to record their process.
teacher cookie demo. display for kids to follow

Figure 6: Students collaborating

to run the code.

Figure 4: Student’s code for the Figure 5: Student’s code for the
human bot to follow to get to human bot to follow to get to
the ball (not written in correct the ball (written in correct
language). language).
Focus on process, not product (ISTE-E 6c)
What went well in your design process? What could be improved in your design process?

Overall, the activity went well. The learning objective was met, and the kids enjoyed the
activity. My favorite touch was the kids' excitement when I gave unclear directions and my
team teacher followed them literally. In the future, I would prefer to be outside and let the kids
draw the grid out so it’s larger. However, time constraints did not allow for that.

Failure (ISTE-E 6C)

What type of failures did you experience with the project? This could include failures that you
had with planning and teaching your Creative Computing Project in addition to failures that you
observed with students.

There were a few hiccups in our design process for our lesson. My team teacher Alisha and I
should have discussed which design process we envisioned. We happened to choose 2 different
ones, so some of the students were working with one process while others worked on another.
Although Creative Play (my process) and Engineering Design Processes (Alisha’s) are similar,
some of the terms are different, which by default confused the students on what they should
focus on. Also, we didn’t anticipate a couple of the kids being checked out in the middle of the
lesson. When teaching informally we should prepare for less structured situations.

Computational Thinking (ISTE-E 6c)

Using language such as abstraction, decomposition, pattern recognition, and algorithms,
describe the computational thinking that you observed as part of your Creative Computing
Project. If you could redesign you lesson, what would you do to encourage more computational
thinking?

ISTE Portfolio Question

1. How do you provide opportunities for your learners to apply the components of
computational thinking?

I believe opportunities throughout the lesson provide students with components of

computational thinking. Early in the lesson decomposition was practiced when students
needed to break down the concept of cookie decorating. They needed to focus on each
step and determine how to provide full and clear direction for that step. This was done
through conversation in the inspire portion of our lesson. Pattern recognition came into
play when they were creating their code. Both students had similar patterns in their
code. I believe we could have discussed how patterns play an important part in
traditional computer programing and how when patterns are identified how they are
beneficial to computational thinking because they allow for more efficient coding. I also
 believe there was more room to discuss abstraction in the lesson, unfortunately, that
was not a topic that we focused much time on. Abstraction is important in
computational thinking because allows the users to focus on the problem we are trying
to solve. I could have had a discussion with the students about the color of the
basketball and if that mattered as they were writing their code. This would have been a
great opportunity to address the importance of only focusing on important
characteristics of our problem. Finally, I think algorithms were a major focus of this
lesson. Students had to create algorithms for decorating the cookie. We discussed that
the steps should be precise but detailed. We discussed how everyday tasks are just sets
of algorithms we have grown accustomed to following. They then had to create their
own algorithm for getting to a specific point on a grid. They even wrote their steps in
pseudocode. The student who did not write her algorithm with the given code, saw
firsthand how a computer is only as good as the algorithm it was given when. She saw
how when steps are not clear, the computer will “bug”.

ISTE NOTE 1: To meet this criteria you must show how you provide opportunities for your
learners to engage in the Design Thinking or Computational Thinking process, just presenting
on what it is, is not enough.

ISTE NOTE 2: Please specifically identify each of the steps of which process you identify in your
artifact, as well as how the details of the lesson/activity as it fits into the Design Thinking or
Computational Thinking process, in your artifact.

Nurturing Creativity (ISTE-E 6d)

Explain how you intentionally modeled and nurtured creativity and creative expression to
communicate ideas, knowledge, or connections as part of your project. Consider using the 4P
framework (Projects, Peers, Passion, and Play).

ISTE Portfolio Questions

1. How do you demonstrate creativity and creative problem solving for your learners by
providing them opportunities to obtain feedback and showcase their final work?
I demonstrated creativity and problem-solving to the students during the early stages of
the teacher cookie decorating demo. I mentioned a few different ways to get to the
same outcome. I corrected my unclear directions with new ones, adding details to steps.
I showcased creativity and problem-solving.

2. What opportunities are you providing for your learners to express their own creativity?
There will be numerous paths to get to the same outcome. Whether it’s their decorated
cookie or the object on the ground. This allows for creativity and differences to be
showcased and shows students that computer programs can be written in multiple ways
to complete the same task.
 3. How do your learners share their work with others?
When students were done writing their grid program, they had their bot run the
program in front of their peers and compare their algorithm with others. Students also
showed their written algorithms to each other. Finally, they were able to show their
final cookie to their peers.

4. Do you provide opportunities for peer feedback?

Normally, I provide a peer evaluation sheet done via google forms or on paper.
However, with the nature of the non-traditional classroom, we opted to decompress at
the end of the ball activity while the remaining students were making their cookie
decorations. I like the verbal method because it allowed students to hear positive
attributes about their work. I also like my traditional peer evaluation forms because it’s
numerical data that can be assessed and accounted for in the grade total. Maybe in the
future, I can do a combination of both.

5. Do you encourage this creativity using technology resources and/or tools?

This will be an unplugged assignment, so we won’t be using any traditional technology.

Final Thoughts
Use this section for any additional reflection that you have about the Creative Computing
Project or how you see creativity could be better infused into the learning process.

In the future, I want to make sure I put little blurbs about each part of the student’s design
process in their booklet. I also would challenge the students to each create 2-3 algorithms that
get their bot to the designated spot on the grid. Having students create more than one
outcome forces them to think outside of their original thought process. Overall, I think the
project went well and would love to try it again with a new group of kids and more time!