🔁 https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/627831170974224384
Amy shared https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/627831170974224384
prewired (13 out of 29)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- weekly or bi-weekly - so stay tuned for more info about that. (And if you want to help or participate, get in touch!)
🔁 https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/627437440316387328
Amy shared https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/627437440316387328
Around the wifi issues, preparation is underway!
Waiting for the bus to Birmingham for Festival of Code! Excited... Exhausted in anticipation..
🔁 https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/625600286762135552
Amy shared https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/625600286762135552
YRS Edinburgh 2015
☑ Attending!
This year I'm Centre Lead for Edinburgh (Prewired) YRS Centre. Kids hack all week, and we (Scottish Centres teaming up) take a coach to Birmingham on Friday for the Festival of Code at the weekend.
RSVP
YRS Edinburgh 2015This year I'm Centre Lead for Edinburgh (Prewired) YRS Centre. Kids hack all week, and we (Scottish Centres teaming up) take a coach to Birmingham on Friday for the Festival of Code at the weekend.
🔁 https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/618031445018308608
Amy shared https://twitter.com/Prewired/status/618031445018308608
Organiser, Edinburgh Centre, Young Rewired State
☑ Attending!
Heading up this year's Edinburgh YRS contingent. Want to mentor? Sign up! Hoping to raise enough money to take two dozen kids to Birmingham on a coach, seeking sponsors...
RSVP
Organiser, Edinburgh Centre, Young Rewired StateHeading up this year's Edinburgh YRS contingent. Want to mentor? Sign up! Hoping to raise enough money to take two dozen kids to Birmingham on a coach, seeking sponsors...
Edinburgh Mini Maker Faire
☑ Attending!
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.
(ages approximate, I'm pretty bad at figuring them out..)
TODO: photos! (but also see @Prewired).
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 FaireHad 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.
(ages approximate, I'm pretty bad at figuring them out..)
TODO: photos! (but also see @Prewired).
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.
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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Co-founder and organiser, Prewired
Programming club for under 19s
Now weekly. Sometimes more. See prewired.org.
Young Rewired State in Edinburgh #yrs2013
Young Rewired State is a week-long hack event for under 19s. There are centres all over the UK, and the week finishes with a giant sleepover in the Custard Factory in Birmingham, presentations and prizes.
I was helping out with running the Edinburgh centre this year, between the 5th and 11th of August. We had 15 young people taking part, and a few parents popping in and out as well. Not to mention several fantastic mentors.
Every day we gathered in one of the University of Edinburgh Informatics computer labs. On the first day we did some brainstorming, introduced the young people to Open Data, and they sorted themselves into teams.
We had a diverse range of projects by the end of the week.
The Weatherproof app was written in Scala with a Web frontend, and as well as telling you the weather forecast, gives you practical advice on what to wear and what to take with you.
_Stuff Index _was a Python Web app that lets people photograph and upload stuff they've left out on the street that they want to get rid of, so anyone browsing the site can opt to take it away if they fancy it. Helping to keep stuff out of landfill, and without the dreaded social interactions that come with Freegle.
Tag is a game by a one-man team, with a Python game server and a JavaScript front end that lets you chase your friends around the real world, and automatically tags them when you're in range.
_PokeGame _is a real-world Pokemon simulator that lets you roam IRL and capture virtual Pokemon.
Great stuff!
On Friday we crammed into a coach along with the participants from Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow, and set off on a seven hour road trip to Birmingham for the finale.
The Edinburgh teams didn't win anything, but the presentations were fantastic and everyone had an amazing time. The young people made new friends, learnt tons of new stuff, and hopefully remain enthused about coding.
Next year we're going to do more to walk through the creation process of some example apps to get them started off, and maybe do a better job of introducing Open Data and the possibilities it holds.
We're also thinking about starting a regular under 19s code club in Edinburgh
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