Thursday, September 3, 2015

Digi-Spaces-Coding with the Raspberry Pi

Author name: Cyndi Powell
Library System: Washington County Free Library
Date of program: 08/13/2015

Digi-Spaces-Coding with the Raspberry Pi

Description of Activities: 

At the start of the program, I explained what a Raspberry Pi is and gave examples of what it is used for and the types of things that it is capable of being turned into. For example, how security system, used by hobbyists and inventors, micro-computer...these were some of the things I talked about. I showed the teens the different plug-ins and hooked it up to a keyboard, mouse and projector screen.

Most of the program was an introduction to coding with the program Python, which is already pre-loaded on the Raspberry Pi. I followed an activity found in the book called "Raspberry Pi Projects" by Andrew Robinson from Chapter 2 called "Generating an Insult". I found this to be a good introductory project because the coding language was simple and it was a short series of commands. I led them through the project, typing in the code, showing them how the program worked, talking about the different commands, the different screens and how the program can easily be modified.

Then I gave them a project to follow that I found in a book called "Help your kids with computer coding : a unique step-by-step visual guide, from binary code to building games" by Carol Vorderman. We followed Program #4 "Ghost Game". I let the teens follow the instructions for writing the code. We ran their program and played the game. Then we looked further through the second book at the explanations of what it is we did when we wrote the coding. This book is a great resource and explains everything in a clear, user friendly language and it's a visual guide which is great too!

The last 10-15 minutes of the program, the teens were experimenting and modifying the Ghost Game
program. Adding more doors, ghosts and commands. It was great to see them apply the knowledge they had learned from the exercises we did and start to explore the different
possibilities in coding!

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