Welcome to ponderm’s clicky turtle exercise!
For this exercise, I chose to explore the variety of features you can include with the turtle codes (clicking the screen, dragging the turtle, and moving the turtle with keys). I was unsuccessful with this in previous assignments and was happy to figure out how to incorporate them into this assignment. I also explored more ways to interact with the screen while programing and used the Trinket blog resources to use images as backgrounds for the screen, in addition to learning how to use new images as the turtle shape (not included in this program).
While programming and further exploring what knowledge I have gained up to this point, I realize I am still fuzzy on who to specifically place writing or smaller images on the screen. For example, I wanted to be able to put what the turtle says at the top part of the screen, but I was unsuccessful. I also didn’t quite figure out how to remove writing from the screen in order to add new things to the screen. That may be an issue of code line placement, but again, I still am unsure how to do that without erasing everything from the screen.
If you are familiar with some of my other reflections, I occasionally talk about how I sometimes struggle with not knowing what to do with open-ended assignments. I can be creative, but it definitely doesn’t come naturally 100% of the time. I also sometimes talk about how I get tied up in a specific idea or method and forget to think about other ideas. This assignment was not unique. I still struggled to think of really out-of-the-box ideas and did almost get tied up on an idea. Both struggles were overcome with time and breaks. I essentially chunked pieces out for each night and then some during the day on Monday. Rather than getting caught up on one idea that wasn’t going well, I left it alone long enough to forget what I was even trying to do and just went on with a different idea completely. And rather than just having a boring turtle on a vacation day walking around, I added a secretly hidden panic button that modified the congratulate animation to actually represent panicking turtles. I feel this response is comparable to having a nice nap during the day, only to wake up mid-dream with the realization that you actually need to be doing something more important (yeah, that definitely didn’t happen to me today).
