Tuesday 20 May 2014

Code-Camp Lux - learn, code, play


If you are new to coding and would like to learn the basics using simple drag and drop programming in a homely atmosphere, while playing with a 12 year old - this is the workshop you should sign up for!

Monday 21 April 2014

An hour of Code - May - June Session Announcement






Limited spaces available:

1. Saturday 11 am to 12 noon - 1 space ***Girls only batch

2. Saturday 4:30 - 5:30 pm - 2 spaces

3. Sunday 4:30 - 5:30 pm - 4 spaces



Looking forward to welcoming you!


Thursday 3 April 2014

Start from Scratch

Literally start from Scratch!

The group has started using Scratch to design their own application. The first one was an 'About Me' page where they chose to write code to say something about themselves. They also wrote code to make some action happen on the About Me page. eg. make the football roll from one side of the room to the other, make their cat purr a 'meow' sound.


The next session was devoted to making a dance party. The children came up with very interesting ideas and then showed the work to the rest of the class at the end of the session.


Sunday 30 March 2014

Internet and terms associated with it

The session talking about the internet was very interesting because the children hear and use so  many terms related to the internet and may not really know what it means. It was a good opportunity to talk about internet safety as well.


During the activity, some servers were given IP addresses and the programmer had to take a message to the designated server The number of packets the message had to be broken into, the domain name of the server and method of transfer (wifi, DSL.cable, fiber) was specified. The programmer used the DNS table to decipher which IP address it had to be sent to given the domain name.


The message sent by fiber could be carried with both hands holding it firmly. The message to be sent via DSL/cable had to be carried on the head so there was a chance of dropping. When the message was sent via wifi, it was not only carried on the head, but also, I blew on the packets so there was  a higher chance of losing packets.


It was a good lesson and everyone went back understanding how the internet works, the concept of data packets, DNS table, IP address, URL etc. We also discussed why wifi was used despite it having the chance of losing the packets.

Relay Programming

Graph paper programming with a team



To make the best of sunny spring weather, we did relay programming out in the park. It bulds on the graph paper programming done several weeks ago. Children were divided into teams and had to write one instruction at a  time taking turn like in a relay race. It showed the importance of checking the work and writing programs in a proper sequence.



The fact that most programs are written in teams in real life, was very well displayed. It also showed that if the team decides on using a particular method in order to help the next team member, it could be made more efficient.



Tuesday 25 March 2014

Abstraction

Writing stories, coming up with a template to understand abstraction!

In this session we filled in the blanks to complete a story and saw that people can come up with different stories even by replacing the blanks. While some kids wrote a recipe to make cake, others wrote a story to make the worlds most inedible shoe and others to make an incredible video game! It was certainly creativity at it's best!
 
Then we looked at two stories using the template, figured out the template and made up our own story using that template. It was interesting to see that 'abstraction' was easy to grasp using this simple activity.


Thereafter we went back to coding where we left off. Some children also started Scratch and made a cat dance to music as the first exercise.

Saturday 8 March 2014

Learning Functions with Songs

Functions with song writing


Last weekend, we sang songs to learn about functions. Whenever the word 'Chorus' came within the song, no one sang the word but instead went to where the Chorus of the song was defined and sang it.

It was indeed interesting to see that it was so intuitive to do so! Then we learned about passing  parameters into the functions again via songs.

Then we made up a song and passed different parameters to change the chorus like in Old Mc Donald where the sound changes although chorus remains the same.