Monday, December 7, 2015

Hour of Code 2015

Look what we signed up for this week:

We will do an hour of code this week.  
Hour of Code is an international learning initiative, taking place on Computer Science Education Week.
It takes place this week: Dec 7th to 13th.
We are going to programme an "Angry Birds" game.
We can't wait to try.
We could also continue the "Frozen" coding we tried earlier in the year.
How about "Minecraft"?

Monday, October 19, 2015

EU Code Week 2015

LEGO club coding
EU code week (and also Maths Week) are this week (October 10th-18th).
We are having a lot of fun with coding/programming and maths this week.

Ms. Groarke's class: Kodable
Ms. McLoughlin's class: LEGO Wedo programming
Ms. McLoughlin's class: Frozen
Ms. McLoughlin's class: Kodable

Mr. Elwood's class: Scratch
Ms. Cunningham's class: Kodable

Ms. Connolly's class: Kodable

Ms. McLoughlin's class: Scratch
STEPS Visit from Avaya engineer & Scratch
STEPS Engineer Visit

Coding with Scratch

We tried programming with Scratch today.
We loved choosing sprites and backgrounds.
We could get our sprites to move using the Move button, the Repeat button, the if...then button and the rotate button.
We hope to code more with Scratch during the year.
Scratch Junior: Coding on our iPad or tablet.
Scratch programming for computer or tablet.
Shane came to visit us from Avaya.
He is a software engineer.
He gave us a great talk.
We learned how all engineers make and build things, how they fix things and how they improve on things that are already there.
We talked about the different types of engineers (software, electric, electronic, sound, mechanical, civil engineers).
Shane had some interesting slides for us that showed us thing that engineers make, and also what qualities make a good engineer (good at teamwork, good at science and maths, good with their hands, accurate in their work, good at solving problems, and good at creating things).
We were able to name some big software companies (Apple, Nintendo, Samsung, Google).  All of these companies have offices in Ireland, some even have their European headquarters here.
We didn't know that Google is part of the bigger "Alphabet" company.
Apple are moving to Athenry because the computers like the Irish weather !!! (We have the ideal temperature for keeping computers from getting too hot)
Shane showed us what we could do with Scratch.
We could programme the cat to make a square, then to make this really fancy pattern.
We love Scratch programming.  It looks really impressive but it is quite easy.
Thanks Shane and to STEPS engineering for such a great presentation today.
Now we all want to be engineers!
On Wednesday the 21st of October, Shane Kelly (a software engineer from AVAYA) came in to talk to us about engineering and programming. We learned a lot from him and he even showed us some cool new tricks on Scratch.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Lego Club Theme: Coding and Maths

In Lego Club this week , we had a theme of coding and maths. Some of us made mazes as a team and some of us made numbers and sums and lots of other creations with our imaginations. Check us out:)