Block Factory

Hello, Amigos :)

This past week I was in charge of making one block with the function of a loop, as well as researching if someone has already evaluated terminology appropriateness within demographic. This is because our group sent our rubric to the College of Education and with their feedback we had to adjust some criteria. In order to make a block with Blockly’s API, I had to use the Blcok Factory to create the loop block. Though the Blockly API is flexible and has a large library, it is confusing to get used to. This said, I had to learn that the Block Factory only creates the block for you and not the functionality of the block. It took me a week to realize this and even after many google searches! However, I now know that I am supposed to code the functionality myself using JavaScript.

Going back to the design of the loop block,it was quite tricky because though I researched the best way to convey loops to children, it was hard to make it a loop they understood. What I mean by this I struggled choosing the right word for a loop, for example I thought of using the terms repeat, move, and walk. For our Grocery Shopping Game, I am making a loop for the user to be able to walk easily, instead of dragging ten step blocks. I started of first creating a for-loop but later decided a while loop would be more appropiate. The thing I really have to work on when designing the loop block is choosing words that the elementary-aged students will be able to understand fairly quickly.

Though the Fall Semester will end next Friday for Holiday Break, our group will be working on coding the graphical-user interface (GUI) and continue to perfect the aesthetic of our blocks, meaning a loop is a container so its aesthetic should look something like a container. In addition, after recieving feedback of our rubric we have made changes to it and will send it back to the College of Education. In our group, each of us will also be evaluating two games on code.org and writing down the names of their blocks for analyzation. I will be evaluating Scratch Jr.’s and App Inventor’s terminology.

Happy Holidays :)

Written on December 3, 2016