Telling Stories With LightLogo

In collaboration with sixth grade English I helped students to create narratives that they programmed in LightLogo to accompany the stories about their grandparents they heard from their parents.

As part of reading The Giver, the students took time to sit down with their parents or other family members to ask about and record in writing stories about their grandparents' experiences. 

While the students worked on the writing part of the project I 3D printed Arduino UNO mounts, neopixel ring shields, and light diffusers.

Once the students had the stories collected they went about storyboarding the patterns that they wanted to program in LightLogo. I provided them a sheet with nine images of the neopixel ring. They used color pencils to fill in the LEDs and arrows and text to indicate the animation they wanted to program.

 

As they worked on finalizing their LightLogo procedures, the art teacher joined us. Each student was provided a white box with a hinged lid. The students collaged images onto the boxes that helped tell their stories.

Once complete, the Arduino and neopixel ring were placed inside the box. Video was taken of the students reading their stories and the LightLogo procedures running.

Each story and LightLogo procedure is different, reflecting the experiences of each individual profiled.

• 6A
• 6B
• 6C

I was very impressed with the procedures these students programmed. While many had experience with block-based programming environments, for most this was the first time they spent a fair amount of time programming in text. Each student rose to the challenge and captured and shared their families' memories.