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.]