🍇 Mission A2: Find the Fairy Fruit

Overview

What will happen:

This mission encourages Trainees to make decisions that will help impact the future of the human/fairy alliance by using their wearables to gather information. Trainees will program UV LED strips to determine which Fairy Berries (see Material Requirements for directions) are safe for the Fairy Royal to eat, with some assistance from the Courtly Fairy. 

If you do not wish to use UV LEDs, an alternative task to UV can make use of the magnetic field sensor to detect hidden objects. (replace Lights & Colors 02 with Sensors 01)

The learning and design outcome of this mission is to get the campers to explore other functionality of the hardware by creating a wearable that can be used to detect or distinguish between items they can't with the naked eye while experimenting with designing interfaces for wearable electronics. 

Trainee's Mission Objective:

1. Choose the Correct Fairy Fruit - Avoid Nightshade Berries

Students will gain confidence in their skills to use UV LED light strips to discern between poisonous nightshade berries and regular fairy berries. A skill that now carries the weight of a potentially (though fictional) life or death consequence, and a “correct” answer, not nebulous like the fashionability of wearables made in previous Mission 01.

Structure

Note: The time duration represents the expected length of the role-play scene and crafting for the activity. 

Please account for components such as class time, lunch & breaks in your scheduling. 

1. Exposition (15-10 minutes)

Location: Elphame Forest 

• RECAP: Last Mission the Trainees met a Courtly Fairy and had players role-play asking them about alliances. 

• Entering Elphame again, The Courtly Fairy informs Trainees that the Fairy Prince’s favorite food is Fairy Berries. Yet poisonous nightshade berries are extremely similar in size and color [shows them similar prop pictures]

• The Courtly Fairy will demonstrate using their magic (a concealed UV light strip or magnetic field sensor) how to tell the difference between the two. Once Trainees are convinced to help, in exchange for an invite to the Fairy Ball, the Courtly Fairy departs. [GOAL 1]

2. Initial Incident (20-35 minutes)

Location: Anywear Academy HQ 

• The NPC Anywear Facilitator assists the Trainees back at HQ by demonstrating that the closest tech equivalent to that magic is a UV light/Magnetic field sensor. 

Class Note: Now is the perfect time to host either Lights and Colors 2 or Sensors 1. (1 hr)

• Trainees then coordinate as a group who will go with the color-changing LEDs versus disguising UV light strips into their costumes. 

• The group with the standard LEDs will need to come up with a flashy distraction to cover for their detecting counterparts. 

• A design challenge here should be to create a subtle and in-character way of activating their new functionality. How will they press the button or trigger these new wearable functions?

3. Rising Action (5-15 minutes)

    Location: Elphame Forest

• Trainees must utilize their UV lights or sensor, now synchronized as a sort of magic into their wearable device, to identify which berries are safe Fairy Berries and which are poisonous Nightshade Berries. 

• They should collect ([# of Trainees] x 3) of Fairy Berries if possible. The Courtly Fairy can grow suspicious of the campers detecting the berries which should prompt the other campers to perform a showy display of magic as a distraction.

4. Climax (2-5 Minutes)

Location: Elphame Court

• The Courtly Fairy and Trainees provide Fairy Berries if they have found them. 

• In gratitude for their help, the Courtly Fairy gladly invites them to the Fairy Royal’s birthday party, and will undoubtedly call upon their help in the future.

5. Resolution Denouement (5-10 minutes)

Location: Anywear Academy HQ

• Campers return to the HQ to discuss what they’ve learned with their instructor/mentor. 

• Now’s the time to prompt them to reflect on what they’ve learned, who they’ve met, and how they feel about their wearable design so far. ( what code does the micro:bit need to activate the UV sensor? Who did they meet? Questions they have)

• Players should leave some documentation behind on how to open the gate and their decisions behind incorporating UV sensors into their costumes just in case other trainees don’t go on the next mission.

• Documentation can include a paste bin of applicable code, a scrapbook page, or a group whiteboard that they can collaboratively work on.