On April 6th we organized our first CoderDojo for 2019. Again we were fortunate to have to support of ISZL, the International School of Zug and Luzern, and of Thomson Reuters.
ISZL graciously lent us iPads for the LEGO projects and Thomson Reuters supported us by letting us use their facilities, sponsoring snacks for the participants, donating great gifts for the goodie bags and very generously supporting the purchase of some of the new development kits for the event (but more about the projects later).
It was the first Dojo we held at the new Thomson Reuters location in Zug. Sarah Edmonds, General Manager of Reuters Europe welcomed parents and kids on behalf of Thomson Reuters, stressing the need for more women in technology. A parent of a participant wrote to us after the event:
I also thank you for building the awareness on & attracting girl’s attention to technology. Being a woman chemical engineer in somewhat men’s world for 20 years your purpose speaks to my heart.
Our three project classes took over the whole ground floor of the building. The space provided a fantastic venue for the event with enough space for construction and experimentation of the designs.
The Robotics I project allowed kids to have their first experience designing and programming a robot using the LEGO WeDo kits. The Robots II group first assembled the Thirsty Plant kit from TechWillSaveUs and in the second part of the session moved on to build some more elaborate designs using the LEGO WeDo kits. The oldest Ninjas assembled a MicroBot from scratch using wheels, servo drives and wires before moving on to program two micro:bit computers. The result was a fully functioning remote driven vehicle.
Our project page contains more details on all three projects.
Check out our exciting challenge if you attended the MicroBot session!
This very successful day was made possible by our sponsors and by the many volunteers – acting as mentors for the kids or running everything behind the scenes! Thank you all!