What’s Happening 15th May 2015

Due to the continued generosity of Hal McElroy, and the Trident Hotel, Kinsale, we’ll be hosting this weeks dojo back in the Trident.
The theme for the 15th May will be the same three focuses that we’ve had for the past couple of weeks:

  1. Mentoring teams/entries into this year’s Coderdojo Coolest Projects event
  2. Mentoring the group learning python (more on this below)
  3. Mentoring the junior members with Scratch tutorials and exercises

2015 Coderdojo Coolest Projects 
This year’s competition is being held in the RDS, Dublin, on June 13th (see:  http://coolestprojects.org/)   We have 5 or 6 entries from our local dojo this year, and when we have the entries confirmed over the next two weeks, we’ll organise the travel plans for the trip to Dublin.  Like last year, we will likely drive up to Dublin in a convoy of cars….it was lots of fun for everyone on the day!
Learning Python
Nick has put together two excellent tutorial exercises, introducing the concepts for learning python.  We will continue with the python “Turtle graphics” this week….with the goal of being able to reproduce this graphic in our python code:
Screenshot 2015-05-11 09.48.58
Scratch Examples and Tutorials
We mentor those learning how to program computers by introducing them to Scratch.  Scratch is an excellent tool that opens up the world of writing software to almost anyone.   If you want to find a simple way of programming a computer to do various tasks, you are best to start with something like Scratch.
As always…..be cool, and have fun!
Jim Blair, Kinsale Coderdojo Mentor