I continue to be fascinated with tessellating trapezoids to the point that I see them inside my eyelids when I go to bed and close my eyes!
Then, this week I did a 2 part Scratch coding workshop through the Edith Lando Virtual Learning Centre (Carol was there in part 1, too!). The presenter showed quite a few examples of coding geometry concepts and other math concepts.
I had caffeine on "today" (really yesterday, it's 1:30am now) (which I have become so sensitive to for some reason that even decaf can give me a slight buzz) and after going for a late night walk to get steps in for the Meandering Math Teachers Walk for Joy team (Week 1 - 43rd out of 129 teams) and finishing doing my reading, I didn't go to bed but played on Scratch.
So - next rabbit hole - could I get the sprite to draw tessellating trapezoids?
Quilting the trapezoids last week helped with this a bit because I had some insight into how the thread or pen could move continuously to draw a couple trapezoids and some sketching got me to how to code 6 sides and the remaining open side would be closed with a repeat.
So here is my late night ala-Mozart creative time product:
Very cool! Thanks for sharing, Sandra. Having done some coding in Scratch, I know that this isn't a trivial task! If you prefer not to repeat drawing an edge, you can use Scratch's "pen up" and "pen down" commands. (However, thinking about moving the pen continuously to draw several trapezoids is an interesting challenge, too!) If you could get to the point of using the "repeat" block to tessellate, you can also use "change pen color" to make the pattern colourful! :)
ReplyDeleteI like that you have found a practical connection between the activities that you've engaged with in this course and your "day job". :) Unlike Erica, I have no experience with Scratch; however, after reading her comments, I am even more impressed with your trapezoidal tessellation talent!!
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