Sequence 3 - Lesson 1: Time
Learning Intention
I can program a robot to speak the date and time.
I can program a robot to speak the date and time.
Introduction
Look at your computer. Can you find the time and date displayed anywhere? Ask how the computer can display this?
Can you make your Picoh speak the current time using a say block?
Look at your computer. Can you find the time and date displayed anywhere? Ask how the computer can display this?
Can you make your Picoh speak the current time using a say block?
In this lesson we are going to learn to make Picoh speak the date and time. Because the time is always changing for Picoh to always give the right time we would have to keep changing our program -or wait for the time to be right once a day! Either way it would not be very a very useful clock!
Instead we can use a variable that reports the current time so that whenever a say block runs Picoh will always give the right time. On the sensing block palette find this block:
Instead we can use a variable that reports the current time so that whenever a say block runs Picoh will always give the right time. On the sensing block palette find this block:
Try putting a tick next to the block to see the value displayed. The drop down menu can be used to select from a range of different. You’ll notice that this block can report either numbers, such as for the minutes or seconds or it can report words, such as days of the week.
Teacher Input
Can you experiment with instructions from the Speech palette to make Picoh talk? Let’s write a program in which Picoh says the current minute. We need to start with the say until done instruction, then we need to go to the Sensing palette and scroll down to find the current variable. The current variable has a drop-down menu and we need to select the ‘minute’.
File, Save As – currentminute
Can you experiment with instructions from the Speech palette to make Picoh talk? Let’s write a program in which Picoh says the current minute. We need to start with the say until done instruction, then we need to go to the Sensing palette and scroll down to find the current variable. The current variable has a drop-down menu and we need to select the ‘minute’.
File, Save As – currentminute
Picoh will now say the minute. However, if we go to the Operators palette and drag a join operator we can add our own text before the minute. We can now use this program as a skeleton to say other current pieces of information. Children to now work through tasks on slides.
Activity
Can you write some code to speak the time including the hour, minute and second?
File, Save As - currenttime
Can you write some code to speak the time including the hour, minute and second?
File, Save As - currenttime
Extension
Can you write some code to say the day name, date, month name and year?
File, Save As - currentdate
Can you write some code to say the day name, date, month name and year?
File, Save As - currentdate
Plenary
Look at examples of the children’s coding. Were they successful? Did they need to debug their code? Is everyone’s code the same?
Look at examples of the children’s coding. Were they successful? Did they need to debug their code? Is everyone’s code the same?
