CoderDojo Girls Only – Nov17
CoderDojo Girls Only @ Thomson Reuters!
On Saturday the 11th November, I attended a girls only CoderDojo hosted by Thomson Reuters in Canary Wharf. I was excited at the prospect of trying new activities and gaining some new skills.
The first workshop I went to was one called ” VR-A-Frame”. A-Frame is a web framework for building virtual reality experiences. With A-frame it is easy to develop VR content. It supports most VR headsets such as Rift, GearVR & Cardboard. It aims to offer you a fully immersive interactive VR experience.
To start I went on the following link: vr.dewardt.uk. From then I went through a slide show which contained questions that I needed to work out. I had managed to answer the questions and I felt very proud of myself. I was then able to move an object with a cubic form around the screen. Then I was able to see it in VR through a VR headset. That was pretty cool! I could also alter the colour of the cuboid. I loved experiencing VR with A-frame!
My second stop was the Ohbot workshop. Ohbot is a robot head equipped with seven motors. It is connected to a Windows PC running Ohbot software – so that it can be programmed. It cannot run on Apple though. Ohbot uses block programming setup based on Scratch. It includes text-to-speech technology so that you can program it to say whatever you like. It also includes face recognition so that it can be programmed to react when it sees someone and follow their movement.
So with Ohbot, I was able to program the head to do many things such as blink, move, nod, change the colour of the eyes and much more! It was quite straightforward to understand how to program. May be it was because I already knew how to use Scratch to program. My favourite part was making my robot have a conversation with the robot next to mine! Awesome!
Finally, I went to the “Kano” room. Kano is a D.I.Y computer kit (it includes a Raspberry Pi, a keyboard, a SD memory card, a makeable casing, case mods, an operating system, a do-it-yourself speaker). You then assemble it from scratch. It is powered by a Raspberry Pi. Kano lets you play games such as Minecraft, access the internet and do some programming.
This was not my first experience with Kano and I was glad to see how the product evolved. They have now created a kit with a screen! What I like about the Kano, is that it has its owns keyboard and you can do so many things with it. It is basically the same as an ordinary computer! Less powerful but you can still have fun with it!
At end of the Dojo, there was a show and tell where you could talk about and showcase the projects you’ve worked on. I did not do it this time. Next time for sure! There was also a raffle where 10 girls won an exciting goody bag offered by Thomson Reuters!
I really enjoyed my experience at the Coder Dojo Girls only because I tried new things. I was also happy that there were so many girls! About 130 of them! What a success it was!
Until the next Dojo! Be sure to check my other blogs! 🙂
More images can be found in my portfolio here
