This is the final part of the series of articles about holding a programming workshop for 3rd and 4th graders.

In the first part I wrote about how I came to hold programming workshops for schoolkids and explained about preparations before a workshop.

The second part describes how we stared off in the workshop.

Now to the mini assignment we managed to facilitate in the last two workshops.

The Calliope mini assignment: Light and dark

The Calliope mini has a number of input and output choices. You have buttons and pins but also sensors for light and position, compass functionality and a microphone for input. There are 25 red and one RGB LEDs and a mini speaker for output. Also you can have radio communication and connect other devices through a number of interfaces. This makes the Calliope mini able to be used in many situations and for different ideas and solutions.

We wanted to show one very practical aspect and used “The Calliope mini as an automatic scooter light” example from the didactical material available through the Calliope website (pages 13ff).

First we got the kids to write a program that can measure the surrounding light and display the value on the Calliope mini. The code is very easy to make, the real fun for everybody was to run about the room and the hallway afterwards to measure the light value. We wrote down the values on the board and briefly discussed the expectations and the actual measures. I liked this part of the workshop as everybody was engaged and happily measured and contributed places to measure and light values.

As the next step we wrote the code that would constantly measure the current value of light. In case the value is below a certain threshold, the red LEDs should light up. And in case the value raised above the threshold again, the LEDs should turn off. This is of course just like light systems of bikes work nowadays. What I like about this assignment is, that it shows how something is done that the kids already know from their every day life. And how easy the basic principles behind it are, given the right tools.

Sadly, time was running out for the final coding and testing of the automatic lights. So putting together the code and testing the Calliope mini was a little short and more instructed by Stephanie and myself that I wished for. It would have been of more value to have the kids figure out more of that themselves.

Conclusion

Up until now Stephanie and I held four workshops at our daughter’s school. The first two were very short with only 45 minutes where we covered only the very basic principles. With 90 minutes (and a short break) the second round of two workshops were longer so we were able to cover the mini assignment and take more time for the introduction of programming. In retrospective, this still was not enough time to go into more detail and equip the kids with a basic skill set to have them go about programming their own ideas.

Being used to work with agile principles, going this way still seems a good approach to me: Experiment, reflect, adapt, repeat. We had to start somewhere and we were sure that not everything can go smoothly from the very start.

I can think of at least two ways to continue this journey:

  1. Get into even longer sessions of workshops, maybe a whole morning of three to four hours with breaks. This might need a little more preparation but the idea is to make more room for the ideas the kids come up with. From a didcatical perspective, this would be a challenge for myself. I would not know how best to go about it.

  2. Have weekly or biweekly coding sessions in the afternoon. At the Schule an der Strauchwiese there is a variety of different working groups available, ranging from football, chess, baking, to puppet shows. This can be a good approach for programming with the Calliope mini. The kids can repeat working with the editor and learn the practice and skills over a longer set of time. While having workshops on a regular basis is a big benefit for the kids, it would be rather hard to facilitate it from our perspective. Taking the time and supplying the hardware so frequently seems unrealistic to me. Also I imagine that such workshops would attract more boys already into computers. While it can be of benefit to support their interest I still would rather open this opportunity to girls - as I stated already.

Stephanie and I have not discussed on how we would like to continue. Also the idea of offering a Calliope mini workshop at idealo internet GmbH for the Girls Day 2020 was cancelled just this week due to the unforeseeable development of the Corona pandemie.

It surely would be nice to get connected to other people active in this area. I tried to find some on the course of the last year in Berlin but was not too successful to my own surprise. Maybe I missed the right search terms or something. It could be something to pursue in the future.