Indiewebcamp MIT
☑ Attending!
Helping to coordinate two days of decentralised personal social hacking at IWC MIT
RSVP
Indiewebcamp MITHelping to coordinate two days of decentralised personal social hacking at IWC MIT
organising (8 out of 8)
- Marley worked on his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm. I think he also did some general C++ and Python hacking.
- Jonas, [Joe]((http://pages.prewired.org/joe) and Cerys launched their first ever websites (and learned how to use FTP in the process)!
- 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.
- Marley worked on his Raspberry Pi and Arduino based robotic arm. I think he also did some general C++ and Python hacking.
- Jonas, [Joe]((http://pages.prewired.org/joe) and Cerys launched their first ever websites (and learned how to use FTP in the process)!
- 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.
Prewired
☑ Attending!
Prewired
A weekly programming club for under 19s.
RSVP
PrewiredPrewired
A weekly programming club for under 19s.
Prewired
☑ Attending!
A weekly programming club for under 19s.
RSVP
PrewiredA weekly programming club for under 19s.
🔁 https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/625600286762135552
Amy shared https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/625600286762135552
🔁 https://twitter.com/IndieWebCampUK/status/624179335549857792
Amy shared https://twitter.com/IndieWebCampUK/status/624179335549857792
Prewired Maker Week
☑ Attending!
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:
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 WeekDuring 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:
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!).
Prewired 3
Our third Prewired event went smoothly, with 20 young people (about 4 new) and 7 or so parents attending, plus 8 mentors. So lower signups than usual (a few cancellations due to school commitments), but we decided not to do a big publicity push and see how it ran with a smaller group. I didn't notice much difference, since they organise themselves into smaller groups anyway to work on different things. I think next time we'll try to reach our capacity of 40.
We had a big group working on a variety of Python projects (games, basics, algorithms, I'm not sure what else..), a small group doing front-end web, and quite a few doing amazing things with Scratch.
Every week I discover new things these super-talented young people are doing with their time, and it won't be long before many of them are spending a lot of time mentoring their peers as well as working on their own projects.
Nantas came by to talk about what he does with the University's Robotics lab, including the challenges of making humanoid robots play football, and the state of the art, two-million-pounds, full sized humanoid robot that is moving to Edinburgh in the near future. Definitely stuff to get young people excited about learning to code.
We've been trying to encourage them to code between Prewired sessions, too, and about half of them said they had. I hope by the next time all of them have, and I'm really excited to see what they're capable of making in a few months time!
But...
Some of the young people attending are disadvantaged by not being able to bring their own laptop, or having only really old laptops which can't support modern browsers and therefore have trouble even executing the JavaScript their writing (true story).
We'd love to be able to pay for a set of simple but up-to-date laptops that we could lend to the attendees who don't have their own during sessions. This at least will put them on a level playing field with the others during the sessions, and I suspect that many of them have adequate desktop machines or family laptops at home.
Prewired runs on a budget of volunteer blood, sweat and tears, and zero pounds. We're lucky enough to be able to use space in the University Informatics building for free, and there are no shortage of keen mentors and helpers willing to chip in their time (and in some cases cash for snacks).
So if you work for a company who might be able to support the purchase of resources for our young coders, or know someone who does, then please get in touch!
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Week(s) in review: ILWhack and JoinUpEd
11th to 24th February
I went to the Computer Mediated Social Sense-Making workshop; read about it.
I helped organise and run the Innovative Learning Week Smart Data Hack (18th - 22nd), and Edinburgh's version of International Open Data Day (23rd). Both were successful.
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