Activity 2: Colour detectives
The learning objective was to understand how three primary colours can be combined to make different colours on a digital screen, demonstrating RGB.
The colour detectives activity was built to take 10-15 minutes in total.
The primary school we worked with had school iPads available, and we loaded the colour slider tool website on each iPad ready for the start of each activity. The students worked in pairs or individually, depending on the size of the class and the number of iPads available at the time.
Demonstrate that by moving a colour slider from left to right you can change the brightness of the colour from 0 to 255. The higher the number the brighter/ more saturated the colour is.
Adjusting the brightness for multiple colours allows you to combine red green and blue to make any RGB colour. The centre panel shows the colour you have made.
We allowed the students some time to get used to the slider tool, then we introduced some colours for them to make.
Ask the students to make some colours, and for key stage 2 students you could also ask them to read out the RGB vales for the colour they make. For our activity, we asked the students to make colours from a world map, which linked to the arctic ice activity we were doing.
Finally, the students were encouraged to make their favourite colour, or to make the colour of their favourite cartoon character.
When the activity was finished, the website could be refreshed and the colour slider tool was reset for the next group of students.