Please join us for a CoderDojo St.Louis meeting on
January 18, 2020 2pm to 5 pm.
Location
Rock Road Branch Library meeting room 2, 10267 St Charles Rock Rd, St Ann, MO 63074 Plenty of possibilities to have fun while learning. Some many fun projects to build using Scratch coding. Try your hand at using WordPress to build a webpage. Find out about what exactly is a database. How to use SQL the most popular language for database. Try your hand at JavaScript with the Babylonjs JavaScript library to generate amazing 3d adventures. Tell a story with stopmotion animation. Start getting ready to invent by learning electronics.
Recent Updates
The always useful source for projects
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/coderdojo
Forgot to add, next meeting…
Forgot to add, next meeting is January the 18th at the St.Louis County Library Rock Road Branch
Some useful tidbits for todays…
Some useful tidbits for todays Coderdojo meeting or anyone else who could use these links
https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_intro.asp
https://htmlcheatsheet.com/js/
https://jsfiddle.net/3y2ut8oe/
https://github.com/coderdojoathenry/creators2017
https://playground.babylonjs.com/#609QKP#45
For learning textures and objects. Hint [] is declaring an array. {} is declaring an object.
https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#JT8X43#1 models glb
https://playground.babylonjs.com/#A1YRVC#3 More on models
More
http://editor.babylonjs.com/
The Making of “The Aviator”: Animating a Basic 3D Scene with Three.js
Download and run locally
https://sandcastle.cesium.com/?src=Particle%20System.html
https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#KILIHT solar system model
A lot has changed since…
A lot has changed since the last post. For one thing this is Jason Harpole posting instead of David Welch. David did a great job running the coderdojo then he past it on to me a long while ago. I just finally got to posting on the website. I will make a habit of posting regularly. Next meeting is at September 21, 2019 – 2:00p.m. to 5:00p.m. 10267 St. Charles Rock Rd. St. Ann, MO at the Rock Road branch of the St.Louis county library. Not at CenturyLink like it used to be. A greenscreen with effects running in realtime was introduced at the last meeting. It was a lot of fun. Green screen is the process of acting in front of a green background and the background is replaced in the computer with anything. Works in multiple layers to.
The green background behind the actors can be replaced with a alien planet and a video of snow with a green background can be added in front resulting in the actors appearing in a blizzard. Of course if the actor picks up a green cloth and puts it over themselves the result looks like the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter. Python can be used to automate which effects show up on the screen at what time. Many projects are in work for future meetings. New educational material is being written up. Robots will come eventually. Its taking time because we are going with some seriously advance, impressive, and large robots. Its going to be amazing.
Back to code
Summer is beginning to wind down, all the kids are back in school, thoughts are beginning to turn to autumn and by extension winter, where days are spent indoors looking out over snow-covered lawns – wait, what!?! It was spring like, two weeks ago!!!
Yep, summer has once again bestowed incredibly long days that are over in the blink of an eye. And you know what that means??? Pretty soon, you’re kids will be inside during an autumn rain saying things like “it’s booorrrinnnggggg” and “there’s nothing to doooooo” with the same consigned attitude to their impending doom that the French military has whenever they encounter an enemy. And you, yes YOU, dear sir or madam, are going to have to be the “adult” in the room and come up with (and/or steer them away from) suggestions on what they can and cannot do in the house.
Yep, these are heady days for CoderDojo – no more soccer practice or Cardinals games to distract from the discovery and amazement that kids can find while coding!!!
Don’t get me wrong – physical activity is essential to happiness and balance in every person’s life (don’t believe me: watch this). We encourage you and yours to go out and move – but fall and winter are our domain, if you pardon the pun. 😉 It takes a lot of work and incentive to get most kids to think of math, science, engineering, etc. when there are waterslides, swimming pools, swings, races, sports, camping, fishing, and the like to be had.
But what can kids do when the sun sets at 4 pm???
Besides video games and HobbyKidsTV?
See you at the next dojo!
Summer doldrums
Summer is always a tough time for the dojo – who wants to be in front of a computer when they’ve got a soccer game!?! But regardless of the allure of golden summer, we’re still holding dojos every second Saturday of the month, so come and keep me company! Find the latest dojo by checking out Zen: https://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/us/saint-louis-mo/coderdojostl
Many thanks, Stephen
I first met Stephen a couple of months after arriving in St. Louis. I had just returned to the city after living in Iowa for several years and was trying to start another dojo after Iowa City. My last dojo had been an amazing experience and I’d learned a lot about how to be a champion, but I was still apprehensive about the challenges a larger city would provide. How do I reach anyone? Who would support the dojo? Where would I find volunteers? Was anyone willing to take a chance on a CoderDojo?
So it was a miracle when I found Stephen. I hadn’t been working at organizing for more than a month when I found out that there was this guy who was setting up a table at the Science Center once a month looking for volunteers to sign up for a dojo! Who was this masked man??? He’d set up a website. He was talking to sponsors. What in the world…?
And that’s how I met Stephen. He’s still one of my favorite people: if you haven’t had the chance to talk with him, you have missed out. The first impression I had of him is this conundrum of soft-spokeness and passionate enthusiasm that I still have trouble emulating. CoderDojoSTL wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.
So thank you, Stephen, from all of us at the dojo.
No make-up dojo
Hi ninjas and parents,
Unfortunately, we can’t find enough mentors to fill out a make-up dojo to replace March’s lock-out, so we’ll have to wait for April. I know, it’s a bummer. But you can checkout the Learning Resources on the CoderDojo wiki (“Kata”) for challenges and new things to learn in the meantime. And if you have any questions, ping one of our mentors on the CoderDojo platform (coderdojo.com).
I’ve also got assurances from our host that they’ve put measures in place to make sure we don’t get locked out again and they already have people lined up for the next three dojos to make sure we won’t be out in the cold!
Happy coding,
Dave W.
Champion journal – Feb 2017
I got the idea to begin a journal on being a champion and what it’s like behind the scenes as a way to communicate with parents and volunteers and start the conversation in our dojo on how to be more transparent and informative with everyone. Please comment and let us know if you find this helpful.
A couple of weeks ago, my company closed our local office and I found myself back in the job market. It was sudden and has involved a lot of adjustment, so needless to say, I haven’t been very focused on preparing for the upcoming dojo on the 11th. Usually I just wing it anyway (dojos are pretty forgiving, IMO), but this month was more so. MUCH more so.
Now I’m driving to the dojo…
The Tuesday before I had given a lightning talk at a Python meetup on tech education and some of the tensions within that space at the elementary and secondary school levels. (It was a great talk – until my slide froze and I had to wing it. *shrug*). After the meeting, there were a few people interested in CoderDojoSTL and I was hoping to see more mentors and collaborators from it. So, unfortunately, I was setting myself up for failure this weekend if we had any new mentors – I’m not prepared to do any formal orientation and if we’re short-handed, even an informal one will be tough to swing…
This was also the first dojo where we were going to collaborate with InventorForge (http://www.inventorforgemakerspace.org/) to teach robotics using their Sparki kits. Robotics and electronics is an area I’m really excited about, but have ZERO knowledge in. (My Arduino has been patiently gathering dust in my workshop until I think of something…) We were supposed to start robotics last month, but an ice storm had canceled the dojo and I had forgotten to follow up with Jeff @InventorForge before the dojo. I have an old desktop in the car just in case we need to do a tear-down for the robotics-minded kids…
Lastly, it is a beautiful day in February. I mean, beautiful! I’m wearing shorts, for heaven’s sake! In February! Did I mention February?!?
Oh, and the Eventbrite event page has been blowing up this month with sign-ups. (We use Zen (http://zen.coderdojo.com) to issue tickets but so many people are on Eventbrite we keep the page up.) That doesn’t worry me too much because, again, the weather is gorgeous… About a 1/3 of the Eventbrite registrants don’t show under normal circumstances, so no worries there.
Now I’m going to get to the dojo late; my son has now informed me he hasn’t eaten lunch (it’s almost 2 PM), and there will be 10 new mentors all jazzed up to teach kids coding and no kids there at all! I’ll never see them again and next month will be the inverse!
Great. Just great.
So it’s weird when I show up and there’s more than a few cars in the parking garage. Oh, I see Jeff outside the entrance. It looks like he’s locked out – okay, so I’m late AND the first mentor here. Those cars were just employees working the weekend, I guess. This doesn’t look good for the home team, folks!
But then this guy Tom from our host CenturyLink opens the door and is sort of frantically asking everyone with glasses if their name is Dave.
Okay… now flags are starting to wave. What is going on here?
We get up to the 4th floor and I see this crowd of ninjas and parents doing a warm-up exercise we do before each dojo!!! Our volunteer-parents are completely owning the dojo – FOR THE WIN! And not a moment too soon – it looks like everyone of the new signups are here. I don’t recognize half the faces in the crowd, which is again awesome!
While the ninjas are getting to know each other, I grab the supplies tub and start setting up the stations with Jeff and Jesse, another mentor. It turns into one of the best dojos I’ve had in ages – one of the parents is Angie, the newest St. Louis area champion (St. Peters), and another parent tells me he wants to start one in the Edwardsville, IL area. SWEET!
It just goes to show that sometimes life surprises you.
Thanks goes out to all the people who made this dojo possible:
Tom, Dana, Bob and everyone at CenturyLink Cloud Development Center
Jeff Lawrence and InventorForge Makerspace
Rob and Kotomi Dorman
Angie Rhodes (CoderDojo St. Peters)
All the parents and ninjas who make it awesome!
CoderDojo STL 