Binary Language
Today in techie club we learned about binary language. Binary language is the language that a computer uses for numbers. For example, we write the number fifteen, 15. In binary language 15 would be 01111. It is kind of hard to understand, but I will explain it later.
In binary language there are only two numbers. As you can probably guess, they are 1 and 0. We got cards and we put them in order. They started at 16 and then 8, 4, 2, and 1. They told us that the back of each card represented 0 and the front represented 1. At first we started with easy ones like 4. You turn over the card that has a 4 on it and leave the rest on the 0 side. Then we did harder ones like 11. 11 is 01011. Remember, the cards were in order as 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. So, 01011 would represent 08021. If you add all of those numbers together, you get 11.
After that, we learned how to add binary numbers. In binary numbers there is no 2, so if you have to add 1+1, it would be 0, carry the 1. For example, if you added 00001+ 00001 (00001= 1), you would have to put a 0 down and carry the 1 on top of the next number, which in this case is 0. Then, you would add 1+ 0, which of course, is 1. So the answer would be 00010, which is equal to 2.
Like I said, binary numbers can be very confusing at first, but after a while it gets a little easier.
(cbstte141, 21 January 2015)

Learn To Be Specific
Today I learned to be way more specific because computers are not dumb but if it receives some instructions it has to be really specific it will do very creative things with not very specific instructions. we did a project were we had to give instructions to Tech volunteers to “help” us make a jelly sandwich we all had ideas for instructions and we all corrected ourselves and other students. We also had to specifically tell our partner how to draw a house or boat it was fun but sometimes I wasn’t specific enough or my partner wasn’t but it turned out fine.It was fun trying to explain how to draw even if its not my specialty.
(cbsdxm144, 15 January 2015)

Techie Club 1/7/15: More Scratch!
Today in Techie Club, we did more Scratch! The game I’m working on is a game where you are a submarine and you are trying to destroy missiles. I’m not very far along yet, but it’s going pretty well. I admit there are a few bugs and glitches right now, even in the early stages, but when it’s finished I think it should work pretty well. Basically, it’s programmed so when the missiles touch the sub or the ground, the game ends, but when they touch the torpedoes that you fire, it disables them. I’m planning to make it so that there are several levels and each level has more and more missiles. It uses a lot of blocks that I haven’t used before, so it’s interesting to see what I can do. I few blocks I used are broadcast message, which tells another sprite (character) what to do, and a block that sends a message if it is touching a certain sprite. If you didn’t know already, blocks are the things that make scratch programs work.
(cbsafs141, 07 January 2015)