July meetup

[Joel Dart]

Hey everyone, 

Sorry to not start this thread sooner. Our whole family has been sick and were just finally recovering. 

Next Saturday is another coder dojo at 11-1. Well start out with a little show and tell time and then I'm going to go over a recap of coder dojo including badges and belts. After attending 5 meetings a member is eligible for a white belt and so this goal is close within reach. After white belt you begin to focus on a discipline in order to level up (scratch, HTML, web dev, game dev, JavaScript, etc etc).

At this point we have a few options. Part of the reason to explain the belts is to let members choose the path they want to start down. I have a feeling the group from before would be most interested in continuing scratch and I think using more of a question-led format may help them get going more (with the backup goal of "add power ups to your game" if shyness sets in). Then also we could have an HTML group and talk through CSS and basic JavaScript for those interested in that. I have some intro exercises in those areas that we can go through.

I think it may be too difficult to pull off this month but depauw university has some lego mindstorm kits for outreach purposes and my former prof. at depauw has let me know we can use them for coderdojo. I think next month would be a good time for these 

[Kyle Shipley]

FIRSTEP robotics has had a summer camp going on at Developer Town for the few weeks. They've been using Lego Mindstorms with similarly aged kids fairly effectively from what I can tell.

If we're looking for exercises, it might be worth stealing their hard work.

Here's a link, for future reference: http://www.techhounds.com/team/FIRSTEP/FIRSTEP.html

[Kyle Shipley]

Also, I'm unfortunately going to miss this one -- we're running an event for the Indy Lean Startup Circle next Saturday from 11-6.

Let me know if I can help prep somehow. Otherwise, see you in August!

On Saturday, July 14, 2012 1:14:19 PM UTC-4, Joel Dart wrote:

[Joel Dart]

Cool deal. See you in August, Kyle.

Since we didn't have a mentor meeting, I was wondering who is planning on being there Saturday?

[Jon Nolen]

I'll be there.