Here are the activities that each group will be working on today:
Newcomers
If you are new to CoderDojo and new to computer programming this is where you start:
Scratch 1
Racing Game
Today we will create a two-player racing game in which the players control movement with the keyboard.
Scratch 2
Make a fruit Ninja game.
Follow the instructions in this video to make a Fruit Ninja game:
Web Development
Work your way through this introductory course on Khan Academy (create an account if you don’t already have one):
Course overview and get started
Graphic Design
We are introducing Graphic Design this term. We will learn how to create vector graphics with Inkscape a free, open source, but very powerful vector graphics application. You will need to start by downloading and installing Inkscape.
NOTE: We recommend that you bring your own laptop for this class so that you can install and run Inkscape on your own computer. If this is not possible, you can use this online virtual Inkscape app – https://www.offidocs.com/index.php/desktop-online-images-graphics-apps/inkscape-online-editor-vector-graphics
You can download and install Inkscape from the inkscape.org website.
If you have a Windows computer you can go here: https://inkscape.org/release/0.92.4/windows/64-bit/
otherwise you can go here and choose for Mac or Linux: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-0.92.4/
Last week we started with Part 1 of the Inkscape video tutorial series. Today, let’s continue with PART 2 of the Inkscape video tutorial:
Make sure you are able to answer the following Quiz questions:
- How do you switch between scale mode and rotate mode?
- What does holding down the Shift key do when you are rotating an object?
- What are Affect options?
- What are the 2 different types of grids? How do you turn them on? How do you switch between them?
- What is snap? What are the 3 different things that you can snap to?
- What is a keyboard shortcut? What are shortcuts useful for? How can you create your own shortcuts?
- How do you group objects?
- What are layers for?
- How do you align objects?
- What does it mean to distribute objects?
- How do you arrange objects in rows and columns?
Robotics
This session is run by Nathalie. An introduction to robotics using mBot robot kits and a block programming language called mBlock which is similar to Scratch.
Microcontrollers
A collaborative group exploring how computers can interact with the outside world through a range of sensors and controllers. Primarily we’ll be using the Raspberry Pi (http://raspberrypi.org) computer in conjunction with Arduinos (http://arduino.cc) and along the way we’ll learn about Python, C and C++ programming, digital and analogue electronics and about working together.
Electronics, Microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi session information