Make a Mario: Pixel Art in Google Sheets (Learning Simple Formulas)

Those growing up with video games in the 70's and 80's, are well aware of pixels. When video games first started out, the screen resolution was so low that all your game characters and items were made of big blocky squares called pixels. With some imagination we could see a jumping plumber or a flying spaceship in those 8x8 or 16x16 grids of colored dots.

Today video games are so hyper-realistic that you can't tell if you are watching a real-life video or a computer simulation. However, everything old is new again, so there has been a resurgence of love for retro-games and their nostalgic pixelated style.

And so we have "Pixel Art" which is making images out of a small grid with limited number of colors. As with any creative activity, pixel art can have many applications for education. In this class, students will get a free 20-color pixel art template I have created for Google Sheets. Students will learn to use Google sheets and formula writing to draw and represent objects by coloring cells. 

In a "you-do, I-do" style class the student (who needs no prior knowledge of spreadsheets) will create a variety of video game levels and characters (drawings only/non-playable) using formulas in Google Sheets.