Day 1: Experimenting with Crumble
Our first attempt to power an LED light involved an important lesson in following instructions and debugging (Papert, 1980). We were convinced we had the programming on Crumble was correct. The photo in Appendix A shows we had set the light set to flash green then red. The video shows the light flashing but very dimly and not in the colours we expected. We therefore began to search for solutions to the problem. We checked that power was reaching the sparkle, by re-attaching the batteries and the connections of the (red) power leads.
After trying many problems and deciding we were STUCK, Genevieve asked if we had turned the battery pack on. We hadn’t!
Reflections on experience:
This situation will almost certainly occur for the learners in our groups, it is important that they reflect on and learn from their mistakes. It is vital that they are given opportunities to debug and that teacher intervention is timely and meaningful.
Other areas of learning on day 1:
The importance of plaiting leads. This is vital to time saving later on and we must decide whether to teach children how to plait and develop their fine motor skills or to plait the leads ourselves to save time. It is important to note that boys will find this more difficult as their muscle development will not be as advanced
Trial and error
Scaffolding from Genevieve (Vygotsky, 1979)
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