A couple of months ago I discovered Turtle Stitch – a browser based programming language modeled after Snap! to help create patterns for embroidery machines. The idea of being able to create stitch layouts using code sounded fascinating. Since then, and after a wonderful virtual webinar with Professor Margaret Low, I set about exploring different aspects of it.
First, a little Math and Coding
One of the challenges (and advantages?) of teaching at the same school as the one your child goes to is getting to share the same holidays. This meant I needed to find new ways (and hopefully creative ones!) to keep my little one busy during the summer break. Since she loves drawing and coloring I wanted to experiment with TurtleStitch and see if coding and coloring can somehow be blended. She also enjoys some coding so together we set about figuring out the design.
After some experimenting, she liked this first mandala. We talked about angles, turns, steps and how many times this sequence needs to repeat itself (loops) first on paper. Then we played around with TurtleStitch to create this initial version.
As you can see, this basic design uses a loop that runs 10 times and in each iteration, it moves X steps before turning right thrice and left once.
After the loop is done, and this was a special feature our little art designer thought of, a little away from the mandala would be her name.
Then, the Art
The resulting design looks like the image on the left. She then used Kami App to color it in digitally, resulting in the image you see on the right.
The completed version
Design 2
For the next design we tried changing a few parameters in the loop and angles. This design was more intense in terms of detail. She enjoyed having more areas to color!
We then made another version of this which was her most complex one. She colored in specific elements from her life – her likes, friends, shows she enjoys, books she reads etc – in each of the inner spaces of the mandala. My favorite was her showcasing the main characters of the show Avatar – The Last Airbender!
Some quick takeaways
- As always it reminded me that coding need not (should not!) be treated as an isolated specialist subject. If done right it has a place in every other subject area.
- Focusing on the coloring of a design as the main idea rather than coding helped us work better on this little project. Often the coding part becomes such a huge centerpiece that the context and relevance of it can become blurry.
- The artwork is what she will remember more than the coding. This in a way is actually the goal. Writing algorithms maybe the core idea but what it sets up and establishes for everyone to see, use and experience stays longer in memory.
- As always, this linked right into my unending focus on interdisciplinary work. Finding ways to link passion projects to computational thinking based work is definitely an area I will continue to explore.
Compute Thought 