"CodgerDojo" : some introductory technology for parents of Dojo Ninjas and other interested parties ...

[Bray CoderDojo]

Hi there,

the middle of the summer, and time for a little update from CoderDojo Bray.

We've had two of our three DojoDivas sessions for girls only so far, well attended with about 50 girls showing up to get an introduction to Scratch, HTML and a bit of Arduino thrown in on the sidelines.

Our final one of the three sessions is on next Saturday, 3rd August.

Hopefully we'll see lots of those girls come back to our regular sessions, when we start up again in September.

We were hoping to do some special sessions on robotics during the summer, but this depended on two things neither of which has happened yet:

- the robotics kit vendor needed to complete and make available their Arduino robotics kits, and

- we needed to collect all the cash for the Arduino kits we assembled in May/June

The robot kits aren't available yet, but even if they were we don't have the cash to buy some yet since we have not collected all the cash for the Arduino kits ordered by parents from the Bray dojo, so we don't yet have the funds to buy any. If you have ordered a kit, please arrange to collect (and pay for!) it soon, so that when the robot kits come out we'll be able to grab some of the first batch.

Now to the main purpose of this mail: before our Summer break, we though it might be an idea towards the end of August to have a couple of sessions on Saturday afternoons which were aimed more at parents than kids.

Our working title for this was CodgerDojo ... bringing some tech to us older folks.

Our idea was to have two sessions where we would prepare some introduction to technology, aimed at a more grown-up audience (basically, a couple of short presentations, say an hour or 90 minutes long, with time for questions)

There we would give a basic introduction to computers, software, networking, the internet and how it works, passwords, websites ... 

It won't turn you into Bill Gates, but it would give a good basic introduction to the technology that your kids are using, and are learning to program in CoderDojo.

We were also thinking it might be an idea to have a second part of each session, where the kids can show their parents something.

It might be Minecraft. In might be Scratch, or HTML. So not a regular CoderDojo session, but a time for the kids to show the parents something fun with technology.

Is this something which you as the CoderDojo parents think would be a good idea, and would you like to attend?

We're asking because we'd have to prepare the presentations and so on ... which would be a reasonable amount of work.

So we'll do it if there is sufficient interest.

Over to you: something you would be interested in, or not?

Regards

CoderDojo Bray team

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[Siobhan Gaffney]

Hi to all in Bray and Liam,

Ranafast calling again!! Just wonder did you go ahead with the CodgerDojo (great name by the way!) and if so do you have any printouts / feedback that you can share? 

Liam,

Will be back to you with loads of other questions I am sure.  We are aiming for a taster session here on the 9th November so I am sure before and especially after will have loads of questions.

Thanks.

Siobhan

[Liam Friel]

Hi Siobhan

actually, we didn't run it yet, but we had a different idea.

Our idea was to complete the preparation of it and offer it as a possible fundraising evening to the Parent's Association of Presentation College (which hosts us).

So we proposed that we'd do a CodgerDojo (tm) on a weekday evening after the October Bank Holiday w/e sometime, invite parents both from our mailing list and from the general school, and suggest that parents who attend give a small donation to the Pres PA.

The PA will present this at their next committee meeting and if it is blessed by them, well then I'll have to finish the slides :-)

When I do, we'll share them.

Liam

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Liam Friel

mob: +353-86-8546660

twitter: @liamfriel | skype: liam.friel | linkedin: http://ie.linkedin.com/in/liamfriel

[Siobhan Gaffney]

Thanks Liam.

On Monday, July 29, 2013 1:33:17 AM UTC+1, Bray Team wrote: