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The Prison Break | Think Like A Coder, Ep 1

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  • 7,029 Questions Answered
  • TEDEd Animation

Let’s Begin…

This is episode 1 of our animated series “Think Like A Coder.” This 10-episode narrative follows a girl, Ethic, and her robot companion, Hedge, as they attempt to save the world. The two embark on a quest to collect three artifacts and must solve their way through a series of programming puzzles.

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TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Alex Rosenthal
  • Director Tolga Yıldız
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Producer Serin İnan
  • CG Supervisor Saman Khorram
  • Concept and Character Design Ali Anılır, İbrahim Hakkı Uslu
  • 2D Motion Design Sena Celebi
  • Modeling Elif Kaya , Hür Serhat Öz
  • Rigging Eda Gokce , Cuneyt Guclu
  • Texturing Ali Anılır
  • Lighting and Shading Alperen Özgür , Dolunay Bal
  • 3D Animation Eyuphan Uslu , Gokhan Aslaner
  • 2D Animation Tuncay Çetin
  • Music Tolga Yıldız
  • Sound Designer and Mixer Deniz Doğançay
  • Project Coordinator Gizem Tutumlu
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
  • Associate Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Fact-Checker Eden Girma
  • Special Thanks Sara Kladky, Eric Wastl
Additional Resources for you to Explore
The goal is to program a lock pick to pass through any door with a certain type of lock. The locks each have a tumbler that can be set to any of 100 positions. The lock pick can be programmed with only the simplest kind of code, which basically gives a command to set this tumbler to n, then move to the next tumbler, then set that to some function of n, and loop over and over.

How do you program your lock pick to cycle through every possible position of tumblers?

Main concept: Loops
Code.org resource: Loops with the bee

code.org (https://code.org) has great resources for students and teachers. It also includes an extensive curriculum mapped to K-12 curriculum standards (https://curriculum.code.org/csf-19/standards/).

If you’re looking for programming challenges, check out the Advent of Code, which is run by Eric Wastl, who consulted extensively on Think Like a Coder and inspired quite a few of the puzzles. The Advent of Code is a yearly event that takes place in December and involves 25 coding challenges linked together by an overarching plot. It’s also available throughout the rest of the year, and the challenges it features are a great way to stretch your coding and problem-solving skills once you have basic proficiency with a programming language.

FreeCodeCamp (https://www.freecodecamp.org) has thousands of coding lessons and programming challenges, and you can even get certified for a few different skills.

University of Michigan's Python for Everybody Specialization on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/python) is a beginner-level intro to software development using python that focuses on interacting with data.

Microsoft has a 44 video series called Python for Beginners. In their words, “Even though we won’t cover everything there is to know about Python in the course, we want to make sure we give you the foundation on programming in Python, starting from common everyday code and scenarios. At the end of the course, you’ll be able to go and learn on your own, for example with docs, tutorials, or books.”

If you’re trying to decide what programming language to learn, a flowchart like this one may be a helpful starting point.

Books:
Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World by Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, is an excellent introduction for programmers just getting started.

For more experienced programmers, Cracking the Coding Interview is a great resource for problem solving with a variety of different techniques, as well as preparing for coding interviews (as the title suggests). Some of the puzzles featured in Think Like a Coder were inspired by this book.


Avatar for Andrea Watkins
Andrea Watkins
One way to use this series in class, (besides the obvious STEAM connections), is to discuss how short stories are created. Look at character development, setting, plot, critical problem, events (clues) etc. Students can follow the episodes and figure out the codes, but then journal and/ or write each episodes as a chapter or a short story in their own words.
09/30/2019 • 
 24 Responses
 / 24 Updates
Avatar for Joseph casazza
this is a lesson on how to code but one thing I can tell you is that you will need to use way more blocks when you code and the blocks won't be as simple as check color. And in my opinion, they make it seem way easier than it is.
10/02/2019 • 
 13 Responses
 / 13 Updates
Avatar for Thailian brown
I agree! I think that in reality, cracking codes is a lot more complicated than having a robot doing it for you. This animation really does make it seems a lot easier, however it is starting to teach us a lesson about coding in general. Who knows? Maybe we might need this in life eventually.
10/03/2019 • 
 4 Responses
 / 4 Updates
Avatar for Andrea Watkins
Andrea Watkins
10/07/2019 • 
 1 Response
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Avatar for Matthew Tompkins
Can you make a more complicated one?
11/19/2019 • 
 1 Response
 / 1 Updates
Avatar for Andre Nazaryan
My honest opinion would be that this series should help us students with Code.org. There could be certain students that don't understand something in the courses and come here for help.
03/12/2020 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Kim Bunnell
Does anyone know when episodes 8, 9 and 10 will be released?
03/29/2020 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Alondra Bernal
08/07/2020 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Kylie Dazen
08/10/2020 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Siani King
this video has show me coding is easy but its not ot hard but they got this
11/03/2020 • 
 3 Responses
 / 3 Updates
Avatar for Aidai Sandybaeva
I am here to practice my English language from the channel LinguaMarino. In my opinon this video is interesting
10/30/2021 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Adejuwon Akerele
How does ethic solve all her problems with the code and why does she use code
11/09/2021 • 
 1 Response
 / 1 Updates
Avatar for Cansu Yeksan Aktaş
Linear search is one of the most common algorithms in the software realm, so is this really efficient? Is it possible that there are more efficient algorithms to solve the problem, such as binary search? I think in order to use binary search, we would need some extra information in addition to seeing the color of the dial. We should be able to know additionally if the correct number that results in a green dial color is in a specific range, e.g. between one and fifty.
09/02/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Jeffri ArandaLara
When coding it won't be as easy or as fast as show here in the video. And color or rotation won't be the main parts to coding you'll need way more.When coding its a hard but rewarding process of trail and error.
09/15/2022 • 
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Avatar for Josthin Montoya Cruz
09/22/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Jesula Augustin
09/23/2022 • 
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Avatar for f k
f k
ted ed
10/23/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for sid bickel
10/23/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for sid bickel
10/23/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Callan Smith
chata
10/24/2022 • 
 5 Responses
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Avatar for Berkley Czehura
It is fun to learn about code and how to use it
10/28/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Lincoln Kuchtyn
it is a cool thing i liked it dude
10/28/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Jonah West
so if the gril break out of prison and the robot cops find the could be killed or they could be in there forever but if she breaks out of prison and the cops don't find her she can save the world with the robot friend
10/28/2022 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Anastasia VOLIK
think like a coder
02/14/2023 • 
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Avatar for Tj GROGEL
fortnite
02/14/2023 • 
 0 Responses
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Avatar for Abigail Newmn
What is the diffrence between 4 dials and one dial.
02/19/2023 • 
 0 Responses
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Create and share a new lesson based on this one.

About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Alex Rosenthal
  • Director Tolga Yıldız
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Producer Serin İnan
  • CG Supervisor Saman Khorram
  • Concept and Character Design Ali Anılır, İbrahim Hakkı Uslu
  • 2D Motion Design Sena Celebi
  • Modeling Elif Kaya , Hür Serhat Öz
  • Rigging Eda Gokce , Cuneyt Guclu
  • Texturing Ali Anılır
  • Lighting and Shading Alperen Özgür , Dolunay Bal
  • 3D Animation Eyuphan Uslu , Gokhan Aslaner
  • 2D Animation Tuncay Çetin
  • Music Tolga Yıldız
  • Sound Designer and Mixer Deniz Doğançay
  • Project Coordinator Gizem Tutumlu
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
  • Associate Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Fact-Checker Eden Girma
  • Special Thanks Sara Kladky, Eric Wastl

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