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 and Sphero will replicate the line. Among the other apps I've tried for Sphero, I found the original Sphero app not very intuitive and the Zombie game was too hard to keep Sphero in line with the camera. Sphero comes with ramps to practice driving but I'm hoping to build him an obstacle course this week. You can use the Sphero cam app to capture the action on your iPad.

Sphero Stunts from Duxbury Free Library on Vimeo.

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