Wearable tech for Year 7s

Codingbug was delighted to be asked to work with Annie Lywood – the founder of Bonnie Binary – to deliver a ‘wearable technology’ workshop for 50 students at Newent Community School in Gloucestershire at the end of the summer term.

We gave the students an introduction to ‘wearable technology’ and they then had a go at making their own badges. We brought in all the materials the students needed for the workshop, including electronic components, conductive threads, felt… and examples for them to try.

E-textiles badge
Giant doughnut badge created by a student.

The school provided many of the extra tools we needed for the workshop, including crocodile clips and multimeters.

The students were a real pleasure to work with. They all learned to use conductive yarn, sewed in their first ‘soft circuit’ and made their badges light up. As always, debugging is an important part of the process and they all had a go at using the multimeter for that purpose.

A big thank you for Mr K. for treating us so well and staying with us throughout the morning and afternoon sessions. We hope to repeat the experience again in the near future.

Paper circuits

During the final term of the school year and as part of Yatton Junior School Learning College, I led a group of children through four sessions looking at some basic electronic principles and ‘how electricity works’.

The children learnt about electronic circuits and how to make them using copper tape. Once they grasped the principles, the children were able to design their own circuits with LED’s… and make them light up.

Copper tape works really well with paper but there were the inevitable connection problems. However, the children used a multimeter to debug their circuits.

The children made a house out of paper that lights up… and also made pop-up greetings cards.

I was very pleased to hear that some of the children had later used batteries to test their circuits at home, so a big ‘thank you’ to the parents who helped with their child’s requests!

Paper circuits give children a great introduction to physics and I’m looking forward to repeating the experience.

If you would like a Paper Circuits workshop at your school, get in touch.

Coding with robots

As part of their Learning College programme I spent four hours at Yatton Infant School, teaching children in Year 1 and Year 2 to program with robots.

We used the Matatalab robot which can be made to move, sing, dance and draw by programming it with coding blocks. The children created their own instructions to guide the robot and move it around.

The children participated in a series of activities where they were introduced to algorithms. They created an algorithm for a dance routine, which they then performed to their friends.

The children programmed the robot to draw squares and triangles, which they then coloured in and assembled. Working with the robot was great for the children to better understand all about shapes and angles.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I’m looking forward to returning to Yatton Infant School with the Codingbug robot.

If you would like to see the robot in your school, please get in touch.