Alexis Flanders

This week, I explored pixel art using the CS Unplugged “Pixel Painter” activity.

Before touching MakeCode, I printed out the coding sheets and manually color-coded them.

Each square represented a pixel, and each number or binary pattern corresponded to a color. At first glance, it felt simple. Just coloring boxes.

But it quickly became clear that this was about precision.

Every square mattered. One misread number or skipped box changed the entire image. The activity required careful attention to pattern, sequence, and the translation of code into visual representation.

After completing the sheets by hand, I recreated the images digitally in MakeCode.

That transition made the abstraction visible. What began as numbers and binary sequences on paper became structured pixel art on a screen.

Yet again, this activity reinforced that you do not need a device to begin computational thinking. The logic, pattern recognition, and sequencing all happen before the code is ever entered into a computer.

Printing, coloring, decoding, and then recreating the image digitally made the process tangible. It slowed everything down and forced me to think carefully about how digital images are constructed one square at a time.

Pixel art may look playful, but underneath it is structure.

And once again, precision matters.