Our Control Tech class has been doing Turtle art for around 3 weeks on Sugar.
Turtle art is a program which allows us to draw a
nd manipulate shapes. It works by using commands such as forward 100 and turn left or right a certain degree. The pen is shown as a Turtle and as the turtle moves it draws a red line under it. Our task was to create shapes using a one click method which means we had to use sets of commands such as repeat a certain step a few times + moving forwards, backwards + turning left or right and also taking our pen off and on.
There are two modes to show the movement of the turtle one called rabbit mode which is fast and turtle mode which is slow. The slow mode is so we can understand what is been drawn more carefully and the fast mode so we can see the end p
roduct.
After learning the basics of Turtle Art we were given the task of doing shapes. We had to make shapes using a 1 cl
ick rule. this meant we just clicked 1 button and the shape came out. There was a command which made the 1 button rule a lot easier, it was the repeat
command, it would repeat the steps as many times as
we want.
After completing the first task the shapes started to get harder and the teacher introduced variables. By using a command called store in box it allowed us to make a variable of our choice. This meant that we could change the size of the shape without changing every dimension and only the store in box number.
Command script using variables
Shape from command above
Variables were hard because when i first started i used plus and minus but i found out that they wont work and will only work using multiply and divide. Also when i first did it i guessed the values because i didn't know how else until i found out about maths. Using Maths saves a lot of time and is more easier then guessing and also maths makes it a lot more accurate.
My final thought about Turtle art is that it was quite fun and interesting using different things for each shape. Although Turtle was very good i was frustrated when i tried to save and it would freeze or it would lag and i would have to restart the shape.
