Buying/selling a laptop?
Sometimes we are asked if we know anyone in CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire who is buying or selling a laptop. If you want to buy or sell, send in an email and we will put you in touch with someone if possible.
This is only for CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire people, and obviously all we would do is put a buyer and seller in touch with each other; we would have no other involvement or responsibility!
Summer Learning!
This may be of interest to anyone who would like to learn python – the first two modules are free.
They also have an upcoming competition which is open to everyone.
All information can be found at https://groklearning.com.
Thanks to Niamh Scullion of CoderDojo DCU for the tip!
Last session for this term is on 11th June
But we’ll be back again in September!
Current members will have the opportunity to sign up for the next term at our session on 11th June, so be sure you make it!
NOTE – COOLEST PROJECTS Saturday 7 June:
If anyone is going to the Coolest Projects in DCU this Saturday, please make sure you have booked a ticket – if you haven’t, there may be some available through this link: http://www.eventbrite.ie/e/coderdojo-coolest-projects-awards-tickets-11538727645
CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire at DLR Science event 1 June
Shanganagh Park was turned into a Science Park for the afternoon of Sunday 1 June, with many different activities taking place.
Mentors from CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire were on hand for the afternoon, introducing in excess of 50 young people to the joys of Scratch. We enjoyed meeting some of the people on our waiting list who turned up to have a chat with us.
It was a very successful afternoon and it’s quite likely the County Council will have another of these events in the future.
Coolest Project Awards – Project “Uisce” Can you help?
Sean Gleeson has kindly registered the idea of the Water Usage Calculator that we hope to take to the Coolest Project Awards. To achieve this we will need a team of people working on this over the next three weeks to get it ready for the DCU meeting on the 7th June. Please consider volunteering, we need ninja’s to help design some animation, find sounds on the internet or record at home, find interesting facts about our water consumption and habits, and then we have to merge all this into an app! The question is will you help?
App Inventor – Super Scratch!
App Inventor is another MIT tool that extends the concept of the Scratch program but allowing us now to create and distribute the application onto Android Tables and Phones. What’s great is that you have access to all the functionality of these devices, an emulator to test your program and a much more feature rich programming environment, with the comfort of a scratch like IDE. Wow!
Have a look on the Session Material page for some information from the Athenry coderdojo on getting started with this tool!
How about trying to create your first games – this looks pretty straightforward…
http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/molemash.html
Modding with Javascript
So we hear that some of you are keen on something called “Minecraft”, so we thought lets have a look at what you can do with it, and guess what, a fair bit it seems. And I don’t mean just building your own World – although that’s cool, but how being able to create your own Mods and including that in your World or even better sharing that so others can use what you have created?
Well the good news is that some of the other Dojo’s have been doing that and we will aim to take our first steps to do that in Dun Laoghaire, and learn some of the basics of a Programming Language called JavaScript.
We will start by following some of the instructions that Michael Maddon of CoderDojo Athenry has put together…
So now its over to you….
Coolest Projects Awards 7th June 2014 – new closing date 18th May
The date and venue for the Coolest Projects Awards 2014 has been announced. This year the event will be taking place in Dublin City University on 7th of June. The Coolest Projects Awards is open to submissions from ALL CoderDojo students.
We would really like a good representation – and perhaps an overall winner! – from Dun Laoghaire, so please register, it’s free!
Remember only one project can be submitted per attendee so pick the best project you’ve been hacking away on in your Dojo!
There are some photos and info from last year’s Coolest Projects Awards on this link, they may give you some ideas.
The closing date for submissions has been extended to the 18th of May. You can register your Coolest Project idea here. As with last year the organisers expect a huge number of projects to apply. If there are more projects than the venue’s capacity, projects will be picked based on their application.
This is the judging Criteria:
Coolness of the idea: 35%
Complexity of project: 30%
Presentation of project: 15%
Design: 10%
Usability: 10%
About the Coolest Projects Awards
Coolest Projects aims to encourage, promote, support and showcase creativity among the CoderDojo community. This event is all about the participants, so all those who participate in this years awards will receive a CoderDojo Coolest Project Belt for presenting their project! Every level is welcomed and rewarded, so all you have to do is come up with a cool idea that you want to develop and register under one of the following topics:
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Scratch
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Websites
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Apps
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HTML Games
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Advanced Languages
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Enterprise
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Other
Good luck!
Check-in timelapse video
This was check-in a few weeks back in February – we look like a very busy bunch!