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Welcome to CoderDojoKC! Let’s get you started! If you haven’t when you arrived, please fill out our demographics survey!
Step One: Wifi
1. Open up your internet connection and connect to “Fiber Public WiFi“
2. Can’t connect? Raise your hand and a mentor will get you a hotspot to connect to.
3. We recommend using the Google Chrome browser.
Step Two: Typing Practice!
You warm up to play sports, right? We’re going to do the same thing to warm up to code!
1) Go to https://typing.io & sign in with your gmail address. Don’t have one? Ask your parent or a mentor for help!
2) Choose one of the programming languages. Don’t know which to start with? Try Javascript jQuery, LESS Bootstrap or Python Mercurial.
Step Three: Learn to Code
1. Are you brand new to coding? Start with Codecademy (recommended for 13 years & up) or Scratch (recommended for 12 years & under). Want to try building your own phone application? Check out App Inventor! Be sure to create an account and write down your username and password so you won’t forget!
2. Do you have a little coding under your belt? Are you ready to learn more? Check out these fun games:
- CodeAvengers – learn to build javascript apps
- CodeCombat -Learn how to code by playing a game
- CSS Diner -A game for learning CSS selectors
- Flexbox Froggy – A game for learning CSS flexbox
- Super Markup Man – learn html
- Untrusted – a user javascript adventure game
3. Were you working on a project from our last session? Feel free to continue on that, and ask mentors if you need any help!
4. Get started on the new project. We can’t wait to see what you create!
Step Four: Check Out the Projects
Mastery – Feeling masterful? Check out the requirements for our mastery badges. You can earn cool pins!
Moonshot
February is African American History Month. Let’s look at two African-American women who have helped us reach for the stars.
Dr. Mae C. Jemison was the science specialist aboard the Endeavor space Shuttle mission, STS-47, in 1992. Not only was she an astronaut, but she was also a medical doctor, computer programmer, and built computer hardware!
Katherine G. Johnson was a mathematician who worked for NASA in its early days. She worked with a core of mathematicians known as “women computers.” If anything needed to be calculated, her group would do it. She calculated the flight path for the first space flight around the earth by an American. Using her calculations, pilot John Glenn knew when to blast off, how fast to go, and when to slow down, all so he could safely land back on Earth! Her most famously calculated flight path was that of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and back! This famous flight was watched by anxious people all over the world because it included the first time a human being walked on the Moon.
Calculating flight paths is not easy. The Earth is a moving source, the Moon is a moving target, both have different gravitational pulls, and both are very far away from each other.
Check out this amazing series of interviews of Katherine G. Johnson.
Today’s project: Let’s build something that requires a specific path that isn’t a straight line. Ideas:
- Build a maze that the user must navigate through without touching the sides
- Let the user draw a path that the program will follow
(see: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/97185655/)
Step Five: Show Off!
Did you create something awesome based off of one of these projects? Come present it on stage! Presentations will start at 11:15am. Let a mentor know you want to show off your work. Scratch projects that will be presented will be added the CoderDojoKC Studio by Mentor Eric.
**Presentations may not contain any violence, gore, or bad words. (And we’re counting “sucks” as a bad word!)
