Northfield CoderDojo

05/29/2022

Monday is National Creativity Day, and getting funky with music and coding is an awesome way to express creativity.

If you want to use super-simple coding to create a beat, check out this tool from CodeHS:
https://codehs.com/editor/playlist/963160/6636/4747

And if you want to really take it to the next level, you can code your OWN beat machine with this Python tutorial, then have your friends use it to build beats: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-drum-machine-with-python-and-pygame/

05/22/2022

There are so many incredible people and projects we could highlight in recognizing Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (lots of great resources at asianpacificheritage.gov, if you want to learn more!), but this year we want to give a shoutout to Reshma Saujani. She's the founder and CEO of the amazing organization Girls Who Code, which has tons of awesome coding curriculum and puts out a weekly email newsletter full of resources, role models, and even a TikTok of the week!

You can hear directly from her about why that work is important in her TED Talk about teaching girls to be brave rather than perfect: https://www.ted.com/talks/reshma_saujani_teach_girls_bravery_not_perfection

We're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave, says Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code. Saujani has taken up the charge to socialize young girls to take risks and learn to program -- two skills they need to move society forward. To truly innovate, we cannot...

05/20/2022

Scratch Week starts tomorrow! You can join in this annual global celebration from anywhere - each day has a different theme and a studio for sharing projects that relate to the theme. Enjoy projects made by Scratchers all over the world and leave comments, create your own project to share, and more!

Scratch in Practice (SiP) shares ideas and resources from the Scratch Team and educators around the world. Each month, the SiP website will feature a new theme to explore and discuss.

05/17/2022

We haven't had tons of resources to share for the junior coder crowd, but this is definitely worth checking out if you work with too-young-for-Scratch kiddos who are curious about technology!

Our online platform with short fun activities is great for younger children interested in learning to code: https://codeclubworld.org/

05/02/2022

Coolest Projects registration closes soon! This virtual science fair-style celebration of youth creativity and coding has room for projects created by anyone under 18, in almost any programming language...as long as they're submitted by May 11.

Intrigued? There's more information on their website (start with the video, then look for the FAQ):

Coolest Projects is a world-leading showcase that inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, change-makers, and entrepreneurs!

04/24/2022

Many of you have made a painting program in AppInventor and have dabbled in Python. This week's share is a tutorial from CoderDojo HQ that will let you combine both of those things - a painting app coded in Python! Give it a try:

04/18/2022

There's still time to submit something for Coolest Projects 2022 - the deadline is May 11!

If you're interested but having trouble getting started, this project journal from the CoderDojo Foundation might be just the jump start you need:

04/10/2022

If last week's share of AI-generated pranks wasn't enough "computers doing weird stuff" content for you, then check out this week's: an article about a hugging robot and the research team developing and testing it!

While the article doesn't touch on the robot's code, it does lay out some clear rules that the robot follows. Which ones could you simulate in Scratch or another programming tool, even without building a robot?

How to build a humanoid that gives perfect hugs

04/05/2022

Did April Fools Day find you fresh out of prank ideas this year? Let a computer generate them for you!

AI Weirdness, a fantastic blog showcasing some of the more amusing and surreal possibilities of machine learning, has now asked neural nets to generate several different kinds of pranks:

- Pranks to play on your friends: https://www.aiweirdness.com/an-ais-idea-of-a-prank-20-04-01/
- Pranks you can do at home: https://www.aiweirdness.com/pranks-you-can-do-at-home/
- Pranks a computer can play on YOU: https://www.aiweirdness.com/ai-generated-pranks-for-your-computer-to-play/

If you’re a longtime reader of my blog, you’ll know that AIs are consistently terrible at humor. Whether it’s a very simple neural net learning to tell knock-knock jokes, or a more-sophisticated algorithm trained on tens of thousands of short jokes, they tend to get the rhythm and vocabulary c...

03/28/2022

This week is on the cusp of Women's History Month and National Poetry Month, so it's the perfect time for us to share a spoken word poem about AI injustice written by a woman, inspired by a woman's experienced, and voiced by a team of powerful women.

Which part sticks out most to you?

03/21/2022

This week's share is primarily for our teachers and mentors - a really neat summary from the folks at Raspberry Pi of 170 different research papers about teaching programming! While not all of it is directly applicable to the CoderDojo format, we think there are some treasures in here for anyone who works with young people and technology. Mentors and more experienced coders may also find it interesting to see aspects of their own experiences as learners reflected here - what can you find that aligns with your own favorite learning experiences? What do you see here that you wish your teachers/professors had practiced?

Researcher Jane Waite explains how she summarised current research into teaching programming for a report teachers can download now.

03/14/2022

Tomorrow is Pi Day (3/14)! While we are, for a third Pi Day in a row now, unable to enjoy pie together, we're still holding out hope for better days ahead.

In the meantime, here's a nifty visualization of the first one million digits of pi, with a different color to represent each digit 0-9. It's written with a Javascript library called p5.js, and you can remix it to play around with the colors, change the number of digits, or even make it a visualization of something else: https://happycoding.io/examples/p5js/arrays/pi-visualization

And if you need a refresher on what pi itself is and why it's useful, this video from Math Antics breaks it down in a way that's super accessible to all ages and levels of math experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC0fZ_lkFpQ

Visualize the first million digits of pi.