| When? | Second winter holiday week, daily from Monday till Friday 03.01. - 07.01. |
| Where? | From home, in our virtual classroom with video conference (Microsoft Teams) |
| Time and duration | Forenoon 09:00 - 11:00 OR Afternoon 15:00 - 17:00, 120 minutes |
| Level | Age 9 - 12, some experience with lego and robotic an advantage |
| Number of participants | 6 students and one tutor in videoconference classroom |
To register your child for the Robot Factory Camp @home, first select the time, the forenoon or afternoon class. If you have already registered one child and now want to register a sibling, you can select a second or third child (optional).
After you have selected the time, a form for your child’s registration data will appear below.
Join us for fun project-based learning, creative and STEM education technology activities. Together we will turn screen-time into learning-time opportunities. This service includes a student licence for Microsoft Office 365 Education, Minecraft Education Edition, Codespark and Google Classroom. As well as other state-of-art school apps from your home devices.
Coding Club @home is a supervised, virtual classroom where young members can log in, team up and access their learning projects. Get your kids ready to master digital principles and methods with child friendly solutions made by international education technology leaders.
The activity will keep your children occupied with interesting and fun coding projects. Due to the nature of the setup, me as the remote teacher can offer activities, guides and follow ups. The idea is to keep your child busy with her own project. Therefore the students will learn to be more self organised and to collaborate with peers.
The Coding Club Frankfurt is organising an online based Coding Club for small learning groups of 3 to 5 learners.
Technology touches every part of our children’s lives today. Thus, being in a remote place at home, this gives us the opportunity to learn online teamwork, collaboration and last not least citizenship in the digital world. For the duration of the lockdown, we will focus our activities within the education edition of Minecraft. Minecraft Education Edition has many child oriented learning contents for a wide range of topics like science, math and computer science but also art & design, history & culture, equity & inclusion and biodiversity. A versatile code editor for young students, where they can do special tricks and create amazing structures is a tool we will lay the foundation for your child’s interest in coding. Because understanding the basics of coding is becoming as essential as reading and math. Also, my goal is to improve students’ problem solving and creative abilities.
If you already have a certain group of children in mind, we will be happy to reserve ready-made learning groups for the lesson. In this case, I would be very grateful if you, as parents, could coordinate this in advance.
Prerequisite for the Online Coding Camp is:
iPad, Windows PC / laptop or Mac computer
Installed Microsoft Team
Stable Internet connection
Create coding solutions that include sequences, iteration, and loops
Decompose (break down) the steps needed to solve a problem into a precise sequence of instructions
Iterate on coding solutions to complete a task.
We will design Algorithms: Algorithms are recipes or instructions. The quick start guide for baking is an algorithm to make a cake:
To learn more about the importance of Algorithms in our world, we encourage you to watch Kevin Slavin’s presentation at TEDGlobal on “How Algorithms Shape Our World”, where he argues that we’re living in a world designed for and increasingly controlled by — algorithms.
A key challenge that is addressed in computational thinking is the scale and complexity of a problem. The main technique used to manage this complexity is abstraction. Complexity is dealt with by hiding complicated details behind a simple abstraction, or model, of the situation. For example, a map of a train system is a simple model of a complex reality — but it is a model that contains precisely the information necessary to plan a route from one station to another.
A computational thinker is not synonymous with a Computer Programmer but programming encourages creativity, logical thought, precision and problem-solving, and helps foster the personal, learning and thinking skills required in the modern school curriculum. Programming gives concrete, tangible form to the idea of “abstraction”, and repeatedly shows how useful it is in any discipline.
Students will learn the main components that make up a computer system, and how they fit together.
Students will learn what the internet is and the principles underlying how data is exchanged via the internet.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
First comes the project, then we have a ‘goal’ that we need to achieve, ‘tasks’ that define the actions that lead to that goal, a ‘Time frame’ that includes starting and ending points, and ‘people’ that perform the tasks during the defined period of time, in order to achieve the goals. Project-based learning is not only highly motivating but also prepares the students for the adult work processes especially in development.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
In cooperation, students strengthen their skills and competences together. They learn to work together and take responsibility. By working as a group we can bring many ideas together and come up with something bigger than what a single student would do on her own.
Collaboration often clarifies and spurs students’ thinking. Peers are often better than the teacher in explaining things so kids “get” them. In collaboration team members help each other even with little details, because students are each good at a certain part.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
Design thinking is a method – or rather a way of thinking – that comes from product development (software and design) and offers many innovative approaches to developing ideas and turning ideas into reality. The method is used to develop a solution for a problem and to approach the solution step by step and in a structured way. We playfully go through the design process from the idea to the solution.
Data Structures are ways of storing “stuff”. Just as we can put “stuff” in stacks, queues (piles), heaps and buckets – you can do the same thing with data (information). One common example of a data structure, in the real world, is the Pez Dispenser. Pez uses ‘stacks’ to store and dispense candy. Without structure to all the “stuff” we can’t use it as information to solve other issues.
We don’t stagnate. We learn how to succeed and improve from one point to the other. From each and every task or story that we complete, there is something good to learn. We will learn how to do things better. Every mistake is a potential for a change for the better.
The best summary of skills and competencies fostered is provided by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) of which standards we follow:
The Junior Coding Club’s playful activities incorporate logical and social skills, empower student voice and ensure that learning is a student-driven process. Our curricular is a best practise blend from sources of code.org, Hour-of-Code initiative, Wonder Workshop, Scratch, Hello Ruby, Minecraft Education, CS First and from modern teamwork principles like Design Thinking and Agile Project Management.
We also consider these international and German computer science (CS) teaching standards, such as:
We provide your child with carefully selected education apps designed to lern computer science and computational thinking. But more, our children need to learn those things machines cannot do, even in the far future. But how will they be able to make the difference without understanding the machine? Machines should be always human-centric.
Our teaching materials do not only consist of modern computers and learning apps. We use the latest and pedagogically recommended Edutec learning materials, including haptic, tangible teaching objects and learning games. The aim is to gain initial skills in coding, robotics, informational thinking and design thinking. We use the Minecraft Education Edition for a team project or we dedicate ourselves to building robot models from the LEGO® Education WeDo or Spike Prime set. But creative learning experiences are not neglected either. Digital crayons can be used to draw and paint creatively on tablets.
We use the children’s enormous interest in digital media to develop a small project together with the pupils that they want to take forward independently. In addition to project-based work, problem-solving strategies are also important to us, especially its systematic breakdown into smaller parts towards the creation of a solution. We promote learning experiences and motivation to encourage children to work, play and learn independently.
For the Junior Coding Clubs, we use virtual spaces for teaching and teamwork, based on the Azure Cloud and Microsoft Teams. Protected accounts enable the children to take their first steps as digital citizens in a supervised and child-friendly environment – and we place a lot of emphasis on learning the right rules and manners in the teamwork of the Coding Club. The important topics of media literacy such as basics, safety on the internet and social media are addressed and practised during the operation of the learning platform.
Your own computer equipment is only required for the live online courses, which will be attended from home. For activities on site, the Junior Coding Club takes care of all necessary equipment and materials.
Our hardware recommendations for all our programs are:
Our free software recommendations for all our programs are:
Information about how to prepare for the activity, especially online from home activities, will be presented right after the booking procedure. You need an account and booking the see onboarding information.
In the case of a school closure or limited on-site lessons, we guarantee the continuation of the coding clubs. The courses are held online, live or synchronously via video conference with the help of the Coding Club learning platform. We are well prepared for this scenario and have a lot of experience with distance learning.
Please read our article about our Covid-19, Pandemic and Lockdown Measures.
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