Great kickoff meeting today.  The kids were lining up at the door.  We discussed:

• What do you (the students) want to get out of this group ?
• What is a robot ?
• What is programming - example of scratch ?

I really appreciate the student's enthusiasm and the diversity of their interests

Over the break students are encouraged to try out the Scratch tutoral - Click the CREATE tab at the top and run through the 13 steps to your first program.  Please supervise your children whenever they go online.  Once the tutorialis completed, I suggest you sign up (Join Scatch button). You need to join Scratch to have any programs you create saved.  Joining requires a parent as the process required an email address.  When signing up 1) please do not use your last name as a user name 2) chose a password your child can remember.  If you have trouble remebering passwords, I suggest using a password manager such as KeePass (free).  All the tools I will use in this forum are open source applications, so they won't cost you anything but time.

Other points:

• This blogg is the first port of call for discemmination of information.  Please provide me with feedback.  This is my first blogg so I may miss some posts before I figure it out so stay with me.
• If I use words you don't understand, please let me know
• I suggest students use a bound note book for this group to keep all their notes in one place (especially once we start storey boarding)
• Programming required screen time - I suggest asking students to trade off existing screen time, that is, program instead of TV, gaming (phone, Tablet, console) or other.  I hate the idea of adding more screen time to our lives.  Scratch is also avaiable to run on a Tablet so consider programming in the park.  
• Some degree of just trying stuff out is required by stduents to understand what this programming thing is all about.  However, eventually, students should write out their concepts in a flow chart before sitting down to program [idea to self - spend a day on learning about flow charts]
• Please use only first names [never last names] in posting comments and do not identify the location  of the group

The next meeting with students will be the Monday 5th May (2nd week of term 2).

Possible syllabus

Here is a brief idea of some of the material I may cover.  This will largely be dictated by the skills and knowledge base of the group.  Material to cover may include:

• What is a robot ?
• Introduction to programming
• Scratch - Intro  
• Scratch -the 2D Number line (Cartesian coordinates)
• Scratch - loops
• Scratch - Events
• Scratch - Designing a Game - Story boarding to coding

For the older in the group:

• Introduction to controlling the world - The Arduino
• Intro to C & The Arduino
• Affect the world - blinking lights
• Sense the world - sensing an input
• Arduino - Designing code to turn on/off different lights
• Copying the world -3D design
• 3D printing - starting with 2D
• 2D slicing - create 3D art from 2D slices

For these who want to be pushed:

• How motors work - measuring speed and turning power (torque)
• Gears and how they work
• A basic robot - where motors and gears come in
• Talking to the Robot with an Arduino
• Talking to the Arduino with a Computer
• Putting it all together