Pixels as Building Blocks
Students will explore the limitations and freedoms of creating pixel-based graphics by breaking down a computer’s vocabulary. This will be done through a combination of games, wordplay, and graphic creations of their own.
What Your Students Will Learn
Students learn foundations of computer graphics through examples, and play a hybrid of the games Telephone and Pictionary.
What Your Students Will Produce
Students will create images using pixel-by-pixel instructions and discuss the evolution of human language and computer language.
Before You Start
- Write down one word per student for code words in Telephictionary on scrap or index card. Some suggestions are below, but it’s good to have a variety of both easy and difficult words to draw and guess.
- Easy: house, flower, car, tree, candle
- Difficult: unicorn, Abraham Lincoln, dalmatian, the Eiffel Tower, pirate ship
- Truly difficult: downtown, the Rocky Mountains, Martians, the Olympics
- Load the media on the projector or print all handouts
- Try as many of the exercises in “Pixel Programming packet 0” and “Pixel Programming 1” (and even creating your own!) as possible so you can both understand the process and determine which ones are most suitable for your students.
This lesson introduces programming-related concepts. If you are not already familiar with these idea, read the list below before beginning the lesson:
- Pixel: tiny dots that make up a digital image
- Loops: repeated codes
Grades 5–8
8 sessions: 1 - 1.5 hours each
Informational, Narrative, STEM
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