Had an amazing time supporting the Prewired table at the Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire on Sunday. I printed a load of flyers and posters, and helped haul laptops and lego, but then the kids did all the work. I was so impressed with how they pitched and demo'd their projects, told parents and kids all about Prewired, and generally enthused. I felt pretty safe sitting back and knowing they had things covered.
Andrew (age 10) showed his webcam/gesture-controlled Scratch bubble-bursting game.
Albie (age 9) demoed iPad app Wormy Drawing (which is in the app store with over 1k downloads!)
Harry and Kiran (age 10) showed their fish-eating, physics-heavy Scratch game.
Marley (age 13) brought his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm, that moves around and picks things up in response to commandline short codes, or a Wii remote.
Sean and Toby (age 12) showed their Arduino model bus, which uses an ultrasound sensor to prevent accidents involving low bridges.
Adam (age 8) showed his Scratch pong game.
(ages approximate, I'm pretty bad at figuring them out..)
Also massive thanks to Eder, Cameron and Harry who stuck it out all day and helped with carrying, setting up and demo-ing hardware, and Martha and Rikki who came for the last few hours (after most of the kids had left) and helped with take-down. These people are awesome.
RSVP
Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire
Had an amazing time supporting the Prewired table at the Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire on Sunday. I printed a load of flyers and posters, and helped haul laptops and lego, but then the kids did all the work. I was so impressed with how they pitched and demo'd their projects, told parents and kids all about Prewired, and generally enthused. I felt pretty safe sitting back and knowing they had things covered.
Andrew (age 10) showed his webcam/gesture-controlled Scratch bubble-bursting game.
Albie (age 9) demoed iPad app Wormy Drawing (which is in the app store with over 1k downloads!)
Harry and Kiran (age 10) showed their fish-eating, physics-heavy Scratch game.
Marley (age 13) brought his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm, that moves around and picks things up in response to commandline short codes, or a Wii remote.
Sean and Toby (age 12) showed their Arduino model bus, which uses an ultrasound sensor to prevent accidents involving low bridges.
Adam (age 8) showed his Scratch pong game.
(ages approximate, I'm pretty bad at figuring them out..)
Also massive thanks to Eder, Cameron and Harry who stuck it out all day and helped with carrying, setting up and demo-ing hardware, and Martha and Rikki who came for the last few hours (after most of the kids had left) and helped with take-down. These people are awesome.
During the second week of the easter holidays, we hold Prewired every day! Also known as the Maker Week, from 12 til 4 dedicated mentors hang out in CodeBase and help the kids with projects. Some kids come for just a few days, and some for the whole week. They can work on whatever they like; some carry on with what they do at regular Prewired sessions, some start a new project that they aim to finish that week, and others choose to learn something totally new.
On the first day we had over 20 kids; on subsequent days it dropped down to 10-15 because lots of schools were starting back this week.
Here's a rundown:
Marley worked on his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm. I think he also did some general C++ and Python hacking.
Toby and Sean built an model bus using Arduino and an ultrasound sensor, aimed at prevent low-bridge related accidents.
Mark worked on his Android game in Unity. He also modded Prison Architect and put together a spreadsheet to manage people's Minecraft mods on his server.
Malcolm worked on setting up and tinkering with his own Minecraft server.
Dan, Robert and Bob worked together to create a suite of tools for teaching people HTML/CSS and Java, across a website and an Android app.
Harry started learning Java with tutorials, and worked on improving one of his Scratch games.
Connor and Oli played with the Twitter streaming API.
Albie ported his iPad drawing app to Scratch, and made some Scratch animations.
Mega props to mentors for helping out over the course of the week: Nantas, Freda, Eder, Luke, Helen, Cameron and Rikki (who came on his birthday!).
RSVP
Prewired Maker Week
During the second week of the easter holidays, we hold Prewired every day! Also known as the Maker Week, from 12 til 4 dedicated mentors hang out in CodeBase and help the kids with projects. Some kids come for just a few days, and some for the whole week. They can work on whatever they like; some carry on with what they do at regular Prewired sessions, some start a new project that they aim to finish that week, and others choose to learn something totally new.
On the first day we had over 20 kids; on subsequent days it dropped down to 10-15 because lots of schools were starting back this week.
Here's a rundown:
Marley worked on his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm. I think he also did some general C++ and Python hacking.
Toby and Sean built an model bus using Arduino and an ultrasound sensor, aimed at prevent low-bridge related accidents.
Mark worked on his Android game in Unity. He also modded Prison Architect and put together a spreadsheet to manage people's Minecraft mods on his server.
Malcolm worked on setting up and tinkering with his own Minecraft server.
Dan, Robert and Bob worked together to create a suite of tools for teaching people HTML/CSS and Java, across a website and an Android app.
Harry started learning Java with tutorials, and worked on improving one of his Scratch games.
Connor and Oli played with the Twitter streaming API.
Albie ported his iPad drawing app to Scratch, and made some Scratch animations.
Mega props to mentors for helping out over the course of the week: Nantas, Freda, Eder, Luke, Helen, Cameron and Rikki (who came on his birthday!).
