In our efforts to inspire more young people into the world of Wearable Technology and with the support of The Institute of Engineering and Technology, we had our first ‘Wearable Tech Workshops’ to students in North Somerset.
The first of five workshops took place at Portishead Library, who kindly sponsored the room, over the February half term of 2020.
We were pleased to see students from across North Somerset secondary schools for a three hour workshop. The students made a variety of things, including electronic badges, hair bands, light up pockets, etc.
It was a productive morning and I hope to welcome more new students to future workshops.
Due to the Corona virus situation, the workshops have been postponed until further notice.
Given the Coronavirus outbreak some parents have already made the decision to keep their children at home.
We will continue to run our coding clubs in school while they remain open. However, in the event of school closures, we will deliver coding clubs online.
Term 4 was a busy term. The children enjoyed a variety of coding activities where they learned basic principles of computer science and had an opportunity to create their own projects.
Here is just a taster of some of the projects created by the children at coding club.
I recently delivered four sessions to a large group of Yatton students who signed up to learn how to make games with Bitsy. This was part of Yatton School’s extracurricular activities.
I was confident that introducing the Bitsy game-maker tool to primary school children would work, but I wasn’t 100% certain the children were going to like it. Well, they absolutely loved it!
Bitsy is a great tool to create games where the characters can be designed in a squared 8 x 8px grid. We talked a lot about pixels and the children created some fantastic avatars and characters with which they could interact.
The children learnt the principles of game design and created small worlds, puzzles and challenges for their avatars to navigate.
You can move around one of the games which was created by a Year 5 pupil here by pressing your keyboard arrow keys.
Here are just a few examples of some of the students’ creations.
Here’s a video of one of the games created by the youngest member of the group – a 7-year old child.
We have just finished the first term of coding club and as always, Scratch was the children’s favourite coding program across all the schools. I’m always keen to see the reaction of the children when I tell them that we are going to try something different. The majority will tell me they prefer Scratch! I love Scratch, too; in my opinion, it is the best coding environment for children.
That said, it is important that the children get exposed to other software and activities – not just Scratch – to test and enhance their computational thinking knowledge and ability to solve problems.
In my experience, a child’s depth of understanding of code becomes more apparent when they are exposed to different programs.
This term the children created some wonderful games and stories.
The third #SummerOfCode has come to an end. A big thank you to our sponsor Viper Innovations for hosting us again and providing drinks, snacks and some magic for the children (yes, talented magician included!).
Day One: we got off to a really good start with our first workshop for 6 and 7 year olds. The children arrived with their tablets ready to create an animated story with ScratchJr… and they all did! By the end of the two-hour workshop, the children were confident enough to create an animated story and also learnt some coding basics. At break time we were treated to some magic by one of the members of staff!
On Day Two we covered all the basics on how to create a ‘Space Invaders’ game in Scratch and how to program it. This was a challenging workshop, especially for the younger attendees, but they should be very proud of what they managed to achieve in a short period of time.
Day Three was all about physical computing with BBC micro:bits. The children busied themselves for a couple of hours learning to program the micro:bit and controlling a light (On/Off), turning on a fan, making music, dimming lights, etc… all with code.
Day Four was packed with students from different schools across North Somerset. We had a mixed-gender group and all were keen to learn how Apps are made. The children created their first Apps using the JavaScript language and were then able to play with the Apps they created.
Day Five was about learning with Python. It was great to see that some of the children came well prepared with Python already installed! They created their first Python chatbot and they were all pretty proud of what they achieved in only two hours.
A big ‘thank you’ to our sponsor Viper Innovations for supporting the event and helping us give the children these opportunities. A special thanks to all Viper’s STEM ambassadors and helpers.
Codingbug was delighted to be asked to work with Annie Lywood – the founder of Bonnie Binary – to deliver a ‘wearable technology’ workshop for 50 students at Newent Community School in Gloucestershire at the end of the summer term.
We gave the students an introduction to ‘wearable technology’ and they then had a go at making their own badges. We brought in all the materials the students needed for the workshop, including electronic components, conductive threads, felt… and examples for them to try.
Giant doughnut badge created by a student.
The school provided many of the extra tools we needed for the workshop, including crocodile clips and multimeters.
The students were a real pleasure to work with. They all learned to use conductive yarn, sewed in their first ‘soft circuit’ and made their badges light up. As always, debugging is an important part of the process and they all had a go at using the multimeter for that purpose.
A big thank you for Mr K. for treating us so well and staying with us throughout the morning and afternoon sessions. We hope to repeat the experience again in the near future.
During the final term of the school year and as part of Yatton Junior School Learning College, I led a group of children through four sessions looking at some basic electronic principles and ‘how electricity works’.
The children learnt about electronic circuits and how to make them using copper tape. Once they grasped the principles, the children were able to design their own circuits with LED’s… and make them light up.
Copper tape works really well with paper but there were the inevitable connection problems. However, the children used a multimeter to debug their circuits.
The children made a house out of paper that lights up… and also made pop-up greetings cards.
I was very pleased to hear that some of the children had later used batteries to test their circuits at home, so a big ‘thank you’ to the parents who helped with their child’s requests!
Paper circuits give children a great introduction to physics and I’m looking forward to repeating the experience.
If you would like a Paper Circuits workshop at your school, get in touch.
As part of their Learning College programme I spent four hours at Yatton Infant School, teaching children in Year 1 and Year 2 to program with robots.
We used the Matatalab robot which can be made to move, sing, dance and draw by programming it with coding blocks. The children created their own instructions to guide the robot and move it around.
The Codingbug robot
Coding the robot
Moving a character on the board
Writing down the instructions
Learning to turn right and left on the board
Final shapes!
The children participated in a series of activities where they were introduced to algorithms. They created an algorithm for a dance routine, which they then performed to their friends.
The children programmed the robot to draw squares and triangles, which they then coloured in and assembled. Working with the robot was great for the children to better understand all about shapes and angles.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I’m looking forward to returning to Yatton Infant School with the Codingbug robot.
If you would like to see the robot in your school, please get in touch.
This term the children have learnt how code plays a fundamental part in our physical world.
To demonstrate this, we used a variety of sensors which the children were able to use with the micro:bit. They used code to make a fan turn, to turn lights on and off, and to control music… among many other things.
Using the micro:bit, together with sensors, gave children the opportunity to learn about ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’, digital and analog signals.
I loved observing how playful and engaging this can be and how the children used this as an opportunity to collaborate to make stuff work.
