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Showing posts from December, 2015

Hour of Code Review

This year was our most successful Hour of Code yet (IMHO). We had lots going on and it was pretty noisy in the kids room. Hour of Code on the website was assigned for homework so I don't have accurate stats on that but I did try to keep track of the extension activities with pictures and video . So here is the reflection on the week after the previous blog post about setup: As I have previously mentioned, every library has great services and events but how do we market them effectively? The most successful marketing strategy for us has been leaving demo projects out on the children's help desk. We had many conversations over the past week about Lego WeDo Robotics because the Ferris Wheel, which was built by a student during Tinkering Tuesdays, was on display for kids to ask about. As soon as we reeled them in, we could say, "If you have 30 minutes you can build one yourself today!"  Consequently, this also helped all the staff to learn how to do a quick progra...

Happy Hour of Code Week

Hour of Code week starts today! In addition to the free one hour tutorials on the website. We have a few passive unplugged activities such as binary code jewelry and " my robot friend ":   Along with iPads loaded with a whole folder of coding apps to try. My favorites are: Kodeable Scratch Jr. Daisy the Dinosaur We also left Lego WeDo kits at the front desk for kids to try and we'll have a special demo from the high school robotics club with Lego Mindstorms on Thursday.   Our new Sphero robot will be debuting this week. I'll bring him out during our regular Tinkering Tuesday session and after school for kids to try. He is connected to one of our iPads. My favorite app so far is Tickle .   It has a Scratch like block interface which requires a bit more thought to get him around than just driving him back and forth with a controller.  For quick fun demonstration try, Draw & Drive. You literally draw something on the iPad screen a...