Dancing Snowflakes

By Barb Seaton

Ahh – December, what an exciting time of year! Time for micro:bit Live, Canada Learning Code Week, so much going on! All this excitement got me thinking of how to celebrate coding and bring some attention to micro:bit V2.  

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work with Teachers around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and coding the micro:bit to monitor temperature, wind speed, soil moisture, lots of Science, Geography, and Mathematics links. I wanted my next project to be different – celebrate the Arts and make connections between how music makes us feel and enhance that with some animations.  

Introducing – The Dancing Snowflake. This project sees students coding a piece of music and creating animations to highlight what the music means to them. I also wanted to highlight V2’s exciting new elements. The on-board speaker is enabled to play our music. The new microphone is activated with a loud noise to play a louder tune with brighter leds display. Even the touch logo is used to play a softer tune with softer led lighting!  

The lesson plan is quite scaffolded – starting with just a bit – but showing where it could go! The project can all be done using just the simulator – but really,  flashing the code to a micro:bit V2 is sooo much better! 

I’m looking forward to hearing from our community where they and their students take this little project. I used snowflakes – but really the possibilities are… well… endless!

About the Author:

Barb Seaton is brought to you by the letter M - Math, Micro:bit, Makey Makey and Minecraft! A professional learning associate with Fair Chance Learning, previous educator and Provincial Mathematics Professional Learning Facilitator, Barb offers a wealth of knowledge and expertise in integrating new technology with math curriculum. Barb works with District School Boards across Canada delivering professional learning on computational thinking, coding and integrating programmable devices.