Program for Snap!shot 2021

Marnie Hill

Reminder: Due to the quick schedule, lightning talk times are approximate! Times are likely to be off by a few minutes.**

The order for round 1 will be:

1. Geode Quest - Exploring The Soma Cube Solutions With SNAP! And Edgy , Edward Vogel
2. Machine Learning of how you rate “Noisy Polygons”, Ken Kahn
3. A Six-Year-Old’s Take on Snap!, Cinnapoca...
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Edward Vogel

We present some interesting discoveries regarding the Soma Cube. Equivalence classes forming aesthetically pleasing shapes in the puzzle’s solution set. These gems are identified by subgraph isomorphisms using SNAP! and Edgy, enabling researchers from middle school to undergraduate to explore elementary ideas in graph, group theory and topology.

Ken Kahn

The Noisy Polygon project that draws "polygons" with the inputs for size, angle, pen width, and color randomly chosen between a range of values. You rate each generated noisy polygon and then a machine learning program is trained to predict how you will rate new polygons. One application ...
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Cinnapoca

1. How (and why) I started using Snap! this year...
2. Why I love Snap!
3. A quick tour of Mungeons! (Math Dungeons)
4. How much easier it was to write it in Snap! than Scratch
5. Things I still want to learn about Snap!...

Bernat Romagosa

The Demoscene is a computer art movement that was born out of the cracker community in the 1980s and evolved into a worldwide phenomenon of its own that's still going on today.

I will talk a bit about the origins of the movement, and also showcase a couple of re-implementations of classic Demoscene algorithms in Snap!.

Devinjean

We present a Python IDE that preserves many of the affordances of Snap! and NetsBlox while giving students the full power of Python. PyBlox supports the concepts of the stage, sprites, costumes, etc. Most notably, it mimics the concurrency model of Snap! Furthermore, all NetsBlox RPCs and message passing are supported. However, PyBlox is not browser-based and neither is it lively; the progra...
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David Thornburg

The presenter just added a book on Snap! to his long record of writing books about Logo-ish lasnguages. This book explores a variety of topics, including patterns in nature, and promotes good programming practices like recursion - a topic that many beginners struggle with. Topics have a strong math focus, including the geometry of plants and the Golden Mean.

Jadga Hügle

Reminder: Due to the quick schedule, lightning talk times are approximate! Times are likely to be off by a few minutes.**

The order for round 2 will be:

1. Exploring computer graphics from the hardware up in pure MicroBlocks, John Maloney, Turgut Guneysu
2. Machine Learning with the Finch Robot, Bambi Brewer
3. Using Snap! To compile images int...
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John Maloney, Turgut Guneysu

An inexpensive 128x64 pixel monochrome OLED display connected to a micro:bit V2 allows us to explore bitmapped computer graphics from the hardware level up, including lines, circles, and turtle graphics.

Starting from the ability to display a 1024 byte buffer as a bitmap, we will show how one can progress from controlling individual pixels to drawing lines and circles. If time allows...
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Bambi Brewer

Given the prevalence of news stories about artificial intelligence and machine learning, many middle and high school teachers are eager to incorporate these topics into their classes. We have created a series of Snap! projects and related instructional materials that combine robotics and machine learning to introduce important concepts such as training, testing, and using a model in a progra...
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John Maloney, Turgut Guneysu

Our new MicroBlocks library can display monochrome images on an inexpensive 128x64 pixel display connected to a microcontroller. But we had a problem: tiny microcontrollers such as the micro:bit lack a file system, so there is no place to store image files! Our solution was to embed the image data directly in the program as code.

We will show how Snap! can be used to prepare an image...
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Gordon Stein

At Snap!Con 2021 we demonstrated a platform for students to drive robots with block-based programs in a shared virtual space to reduce costs and enable collaboration no matter the distance between learners. Much of the feedback we received requested that we make it more accessible, adding compatibilit...
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Aaron Baker

Children offer us a profound view into the building blocks of human cognitive capacities and how they emerge. Developmental psychologists utilize game-like environments in the lab to understand how children reason about the world around them. More recently, psychologists are adopting virtual methods for conducting activities with children and turning their attention toward the ways in which ...
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Efrain Lopez

At IDEA Public Schools, a charter school network with about 40 high schools, we have expanded AP CS Principles to 30+ schools. Last year, 20 schools were using Code.org curriculum, but this year we have randomized 15 schools into Code.org and 15 schools into BJC as part of a comparison study. This talk will explain the system in place to ensure support for teachers and school leaders in im...
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Tiffany Lucey

How many times do students ask when will I ever use this? I've worked with staff across disciplines to integrate coding into lessons. See how Arduino sing alternate endings to Beowulf or how students use block based languages to create games aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals all through the maker lens.