Coding is more than our campers realized. However according to them they are extactic to learn about all areas of it. Today was no exception as we extended our coding knowledge on this the last day of 4-H Coding Day Camp.
We started the day with everyone having a little time to learn how to fly our new indoor drones and how to work our new art robot Artie. Now these many not seem like things you need to learn to code but you would be amazed and the thought that has to go into each of these two fun hands on learning opportunities.
With the drones we learned our challenges (a battery life of about 7 minutes). We learned how to fly them, take off, land, flip them and calibrate them each time we switched batteries. Some of our pilots got so good they could land them on someone's hand. It was amazing.
With Artie not only did our youth use their skills from Scratch coding but they had to use geometry to figure out how to navigate this art bot to turn corners go in circles, and other fun motions. essentially they used Artie to create art, and as you will see he is essential in our afternoon challenge.
Our youth also took a moment to get on their newly created 4-H Clover accounts to work on a variety of coding and software opportunities available to them through the program. Each youth has a user name and password (in the care of their parents) at home so they can sign in and earn achievements and badges as they go along and have fun learning.
After our pizza lunches it was time for our own version of Drone Challenge. Today the challenge was planting the center of an agriculture field that traditional macinery could not get to. They had to create a target using Artie, a system to get the seed to the target, and spread the seed. They were given two hours to accomplish this callenge and they had to figure out rolls. The group split in half and one worked on coding Artie to make the biggest target area possible.
The other team started engineering the basket that would attach to the drone and carry the seed to spread it. The theory was that one drone would hover over the target zone, flip, and dump the seeds while the second drone came in and hovered over the pile and spread the seeds out. They had an air marshall, navigators, piolots, mechanics, and air traffic control in place when our drone experts came in to asses the execution of the plan. The target was in place and the air marshall was ready to bring them in. However there were some glitches. The basket had doublesided tape to hold things in place and the seeds got stuck to the tape which made them impossible to flip out. One of our drones took off without permission from Air Traffic Control and they lost their piolts license. However even with the glitches they got at least one of the seeds in the target area, so we are calling that a win!
After such an effort it was time for their last coding activity of the day and snack. So they codeded their own milkshakes. They wrote out the coded and handed them to the engineer who followed the instructions and made them the most fabulous milkshares ever coded in our 4-H office history. After enjoying that sweet treat we had a little time to clean up, watch a slide show of the week, talk shop and complete a verbal evaluation, and before we knew it, it was time for them to go home.
We hoep our coding adventure was fun for all, and just maybe we can get a coding club started in the fall. Stay tuned. To see the photos from today please click this link.
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