About the Author
Ian Murray is head of computing at Holloway School, and lectures in BASIC on the BBC micro at the City Lit. He has produced software for ILEA's 380Z programme, and has a keen interest in promoting the use of micros in secondary education and developing software that introduces new and improved teaching methods.
35 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FOR THE BBC MICRO
Ian Murray
Personal Computer World
CENTURY PUBLISHING
LONDON
Copyright © Ian Murray 1983
All rights reserved
First published in Great Britain in 1983
by Century Publishing Co. Ltd.
76 Old Compton Street, London W1V 5PA
Reprinted 1983
ISBN 0 7126 0208 9
Printed in Great Britain by
The Garden City Press Limited
Letchworth, Hertfordshire SG6 1JS
Cover illustration by Tony Roberts/Young Artists
Contents
Acknowledgements 8
Introduction 9
1. Tudor History 11
2. Life 17
3. Boating 23
4. Word Find Tester 27
5. Vector Race Game 37
6. Validation Routines 44
7. Snooker 47
8. Light Bikes 51
9. Connect-4 56
10. Rotation 60
11. Cosmic Nim 64
12. Building Blocks 68
13. 3-D Prisms 72
14. N-Particle 76
15. Draw and Save 80
16. Anagram 89
17. Archery 98
18. Fraction Towers 101
19. Stock Market 106
Model B Version 111
Model A Version 124
20. Four Stroke Engine 133
21. Attributes 137
22. Words 151
23. Vocab set for 'Words' 162
24. Interference 166
25. Meter Reading 171
26. Printer Wordgame 176
27. Screen Wordgame 180
28. Simon 186
29. Hexadecimal-Binary 190
30. Guessnum 195
31. Tispy 200
32. Queue 206
33. Back to Front 211
34. Maths Stars 216
35. Periodic Table 219
Acknowledgements
Contributors to this book include Alan Baugh, Ian Clarke, B Crow, Alan Dixon, Ian Murray, Andrew Pusey, Ron Woodworth and Chris Whytehead. My thanks go to all these, and the Head, teachers and pupils of Holloway School who tolerated my irritability, gave support and helped test some of the programs.
Introduction
The programs in this book have all been tried out in the classroom. Generally, young people seem to react best to the more 'competitive' programs, either against the clock or each other. I do not condone either educationally. However, to encourage, young people to use the computer as a learning medium, I have included some programs in this category, but tried to steer the emphasis towards using the computer interactively. Here, the potential for the computer is enormous.
The graphics capabilities of the BBC Micro are too good to waste, and a number of the demonstrative programs are included precisely because in a classroom, none of us can reproduce diagrams and drawings in quite the same fashion on the blackboard - and the 20 seconds' loading time for a program is hardly time wasted.
Some of the programs lend themselves readily to adaption by those with a working knowledge of the BBC micro . . . and I am happy to encourage this. In some cases the data in the programs is there to show how the data needs to be formulated rather than as a working example of the data. I would be pleased to hear of any developments of either programs or data.
Child-proofing programs is important, and this has been done to differing degrees in these programs. Do not assume that 'Break' and 'Escape' have always been trapped, or that the adult programmers thought of some of the more ludicrous button pushing of the younger generation. If every program had trapped every possible error, this book might have contained just half a dozen programs. As it is some programs are quite long.
Andrew Pusey's and Ian Clarke's programs were written on BBC Model As, and thus run on them, but in some cases, due to lack of memory, have to delete the instructions prior to running the program. I considered it important to include a significant number of programs for both Model A and Model B. If you have a Model B machine, then freely develop their programs.
The programs, in some cases, creep to unsavoury lengths. This has been done for readability purposes and once you understand the program, then it would be wise to shorten the variable and procedure names. This has been done for you for a working version of the Stock Market simulation.
Finally my thanks go to the contributors: to the teachers and sixth formers who helped develop the software and generate the ideas. But remember the golden rule of software: 'there does not exist the finished program.'
Ian Murray