July 2011 English / German day camp in Vienna (+robotics workshop)

Austrians children need to learn English. International children need to learn German so.... CEF English/German day camp  (theme Detectives) in Vienna July 18-22
Campers were in  12 groups of 10, mixed native English and German speakers with two leaders, one native German speaker and one native English speaker of which I was one. Two afternoons the campers could chose  from various workshops

• Day 1: 2x 1 hour
• Day 2: 4x 30 minutes (some stayed longer or came back)

(Lego) Robotics Workshop: 
4 Stations
Started with an overview via demo and then group went to different stations.

• Enchanting  for a simple intruder alarm
• ultrasound sensor - is someone is there?
• light sensor - light or dark object
• sound sensor - Is something is there and making a noise? If campers made noise, set off alarm.
• Object moved behind a sheet and campers said if it was light or dark and how far away it was.
• [Evaluation: Enchanting    
• [Update: 30min.to 1 hour was short, but in Spring 2012 in France a 3 hour workshop using Enchanting worked well. Also Enchanting tool has matured in the last year.]
• is a promising Scratch/ BYOB like interface to Lego NXT.
• worked for workshop demos.
• caught the campers interest. Some came multiple times.
• Version 0.0.8 is not a mature enough for beginners to program with quickly
• A camper (age 10) did successfully program with Enchanting, but having used NXT-G before he volunteered he preferred that.
• With NXT-G campers might have programmed a sensor. 
• was 2nd real/trial use of Enchanting with children anywhere.]
• Update April 2012: newer (now byob based) Enchanting 0.0.9.1 has been used by winning elementary /middle school teams in contests on multiple continents.
• Construct a 5 minute bot and use to detect an intruder
• used their robot with either with Mindroid or the Enchanting program.
• 3 campers constructed a tank-tread robot in 10 minutes without construction plans nor any previous NXT experience!
• [Evaluation: Really took only 5-15 minutes for beginners.]
• Mindroid:
• Tilt sensor in Android phone to drive Lego robot
• Challenge drive around a trash basket.
• [Evaluation: worked well,  shortest station - 5 minutes]
• BeeBot 

• Logo like- 7 buttons: 
• forward, backwards, left, right, go, pause, clear
• Clear 5x5 square grid. 1 grid is how far it travels in forward 1
• various challenges:
• go to chosen square
• Numbers: go to digits
• Letters: spell word by going to letters
• [Evaluation: 
• Campers and my helper loved it. 
• Spelling Bee-Bot was an attraction when it rained.]

   

June 2011 Scratch Techie Camp

Before
It came together very fast, but it worked out well.
Wed. Asked if I could teach the next week 
Sat. fly  in + continue to learn Scratch+ final orientation
Mon-Fri Teach Scratch Techie Camp (Tech Corps Texas)


Camp Week
Camp consisted of inner city (8-12) kids (ages 8-13), some encouraged by their parents wanting something better and some there because of the free lunch. The kids reaction to Scratch sold me. Some were obviously at the top of their class and others obviously not, but none had problems using Scratch. Give them an inch and they created a mile. We joked they never did what they were told. They expanded all exercises and Scratch cards into something more, without help. Something that was theirs, never exactly like what they were told to do.


By the end of the first day they used features to create short animated stories with effects and expanded on this the second day. The third day was a game using broadcast / receive. However due an all day storm Wed. some were missing and electricity went off at least 7 times. So the fourth day was mixture of catching some up and helping them chose project ideas.  


The projects were mostly dress up games or stories. One made the shark scratch card in to a game with more fish and scoring.  The Dress up games varied...Some dressed themselves up on stage, others included a baby and other characters with themselves in a room.  Some had closet of clothes click on your dress of choice approach, and some changed colors of the clothes via a buttons. (no pictures since the children appear also in the stories)


After Camp
The day after camp, some kids were back in lab continuing on their projects. 
Scratch spurred me on to explore. Besides exploring the best ways to use Scratch, I found other puzzle GUI tools: Enchanting, BYOB, Android App Inventor. The following mind map shows I came full circle to my robotic related tools / projects.

modified and optimized polygon robot

Notes:
Modified/optimized (left) and polygon robot (original) 

Listening to Scratch 2011 Education Webinars helped me find references to explain project based learning uses the Constructivism learning theory and how it works with Scratch.

Curious 
• Language levels vs. pallets/blocks - do they fit together?
• Could BYOB be seen as the advanced language version of Scratch?
• Alice, 3D story-telling vs. Scratch 2D story telling.