Activities
Activities on offer at our dojo sessions include the following (please note that these could change from session to session and you will have to book for specific sessions via Eventbrite):
Arduino
Arduino is an open-source prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino boards are able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message - and turn it into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online.
Design Club
Design a helpful mobile app. Through a Design Thinking Process, children will design a helpful mobile app for a target user of their choice. Young designers will work through 5 phases: frame a design challenge, empathise with their target user, generate ideas, prototype a solution, and test that solution for real-world feedback.
Micro:bit
The BBC micro:bit is a tiny programmable computer, designed to make learning and teaching easy and fun! It can be used to make all sorts of cool creations, from robots to musical instruments and can be coded from any web browser in Blocks, Javascript, Python, Scratch and more.
Python
If you already know Scratch and can type ok, now’s the time to try this powerful grown-up scripting language (and have fun too!) by creating guessing games, interactive jokes, fantasy games, noughts & crosses and lots more. Plus there's the opportunity to program the amazing micro:bit with MicroPython to play musical sequences.
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a hugely popular and affordable family of small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. But it is now widely used for an astonishing range of project across industry, robotics and the 'internet of things'. You can lean to build electronic circuits and use Scratch or Python to program them. Light an LED and modify the code to create a reaction time game. Program a buzzer then use it to make an intruder alarm. Build an interface between Minecraft and the physical world. And while all this is going on, explore the Linux operating system at the heart of the wonderful Raspberry Pi.
Scratch
Scratch is a graphical programming language, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An ideal way to get started with coding, children can drag and combine code blocks and have amazing fun building games, animations and more. It’s a bit like the programming equivalent of LEGO!
Unity Game Development
Unity is a powerful cross-platform game engine used by professional game developers to create video games and simulations for computers, game consoles and mobile devices. Learn to create 3-D indoor and outdoor worlds, navigate them with C# script and get to grips with the RigidBody physics engine. Later, move on to making RPGs or vehicular simulations; then learn to port projects to mobiles, consoles and VR platforms. The Unity activity is held in a fully equipped Kingston University computer lab.
Web page mixing and design
Interested in learning how to create your own web pages? To start with, you will have the opportunity to choose from a variety of cool projects which will help you learn the basics of HTML. You can then progress to designing and building your own web pages as well as using, CSS for changing page layouts; or use Javascript to program how different elements of a page respond to user interaction.
Some useful resources
BBC
The BBC has some awesome coding tools, games and other computer science resources.
Components for Raspberry Pi
Scratch
There are two different ways to run Scratch on your home computer:
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Install the offline version. Here is the download link: http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download/
Once you've installed Scratch you won't need an internet connection to run it.
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Alternatively you can run Scratch in most browsers: go to http://scratch.mit.edu/ . The Scratch website gives you access to loads of games, animations, quizzes and art projects that other Scratchers have shared. Hit the Remix button to modify a project you like and make your own version.
Note: to use the remix facility or save your own projects online you will need to sign up for a Scratch account. Click Join Scratch on the menu bar of the home page.
The online and offline versions of Scratch are compatible, so you can download projects from the online site and run or modify them offlline. You can also create projects with the offline version and upload them for others to share.
You can download the instruction handouts and other resources for projects we use in our sessions from here:
Code Club Scratch projects
CoderDojo London Scratch projects
Hour of Code
Access tutorials, games and challenges including Lightbot, Python and JavaScript.
Python
This is a great Python eBook - we use some of the ideas in our sessions.
More resources can be found here in the CoderDojo Ham GitHub repository.
