The Vine City Code Crew
Session # 0010
If you noticed, our first Code Crew session blog number was # 0001. This, only our *second* session, is now # 0010 (but not “10” as in “ten”). Rather, you read it out loud as “zero-zero-one-zero.” As the old nerdy joke goes, “There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.” If you don’t yet, don’t despair. More on this in our third session, # 0011. Then you’ll be the one of the 10 that does understand binary!
During our time of pizza and drinks at the beginning of the Code Crew (pizza is definitely a bonafide coders staple during some late night hacking sessions), we introduced the kids to the “Do Something Box.” The caution on the front ominously reads “WARNING: Contents awesome inside…”
The contents of awesomeness primarily consist of three things. First, a breadboard style circuit kit for the kids that my four year old daughter Evelyn explains:
A LEGO WeDo motor kit where we can write Scratch programs to control a motor’s speed and spin direction:
And littleBits magnetic circuits — by far the class favorite:
The hope is that by providing these hands-on, tactile kits for experimentation and discovery, the kids will begin to creatively analyze problems and learn how to build (i.e. play!) in spaces they hadn’t explored before.
After we wrapped up with pizza and littleBits, it was time to get down to coding and begin our Python exploration on our new shiny coder lab setups! As I mentioned in our Session #0001 blog post, during our first class we ran into some technical difficulties as it related to the five on-loan monitors I was able to borrow. But like I also wrote before, we really wanted to fund the class to provide the kids with monitors of their own to keep and use as their take-home lab equipment upon their completion of the six week course.
As a result, in time for the second session I bought ten of the smallest, cheapest, lowest-resolution monitors that I could find that would support an HDMI signal for the Raspberry Pi video connection. After a Monday midnight trip to two different big-box-mart store locations, I bought the entire on hand stock of the most basic monitors we could use—at $98 bucks a pop before tax. Since I’d originally assumed that we’d be able to secure all ten monitors via equipment donations, I didn’t include the math for the 10 * $98 + 7% sales tax into the original monetary budget… A difference we now need to raise to fully fund our donations for the class. At a little north of $1,000, this of course turned out to be more than just a little budgetary oversight on my part! If you feel compelled to help out the Code Crew with a portion of this expense by making a donation to the cause, please drop me a line and I’ll get you more information on how you can help us out. And all of us in the Crew thank you!!
Our Prezi slide deck for the evening opened with a video of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, former commander of the International Space Station, who shows kids back on terra firma a water experiment in zero gravity (well, technically that’s micro gravity! Ahem, nerd alert!). What do you think would happen in zero G if you soak a rag with water and then began to wring that sopping wet rag out with your hands in space? First, form your hypothesis before you look. And then open up the Prezi below, click through the slides until you get to the astronaut video, and watch the experiment with Commander Hadfield to see if your hypothesis holds true!
We talked about how coding too is really just another form of experimentation. There’s A LOT of trial and error involved. Forming your hypothesis of what your code will do and then testing it out to see if the results are as expected is a regular cadence of any developer.
Our humble beginnings in our quest to become code ninjas starts with the trusty “print” command in Python. Any language I’ve ever worked with allows a coder to spit something out to the screen; Python is no different. Invariably, the first lines of code almost any coder learns to write is his or her “Hello World!” program. It’s how you make your entry onto the scene of your new chosen programming language. If you’d like, try the first three labs for yourself in the link below so you too can learn how to print in Python!
After our labs, it was time to introduce the tech guest interviewee for the night — John Foreman.
That evening, we were fortunate enough to have this local data science guru (and Trinitarian!) make an appearance at the Crew. It was great having John there if for no other reason than because he apparently also has a pretty corny sense of humor since he laughed at all of my jokes (thank you John…). We asked John about his book, Data Smart and what kinds of interesting data related problems he solves in his work.
John holds a Masters degree in stats from MIT, but he was also a film and math major at UGA in his undergrad. So he’s a pretty interesting blend of data/tech nerd and film geek… He’s in demand to speak internationally on big data and data science topics throughout the world. And if you’ve gone to Disney and worn that little rubbery wristband-thingy, he’s even written an article on the interesting use of data science in that magical kingdom. John’s the Chief Data Scientist at MailChimp (something many Trinitarians probably have heard of since a boatload of them work there!); one of the coolest and most creative tech companies you could work for this side of San Francisco.
For one of our Rapid Fire Five questions, we asked John what was the best movie of all time (or, at least his favorite). “Sneakers” was the reply — the Robert Redford flick that John said was actually about big data — well before its time of the now ubiquitous buzzword.
During the interviews both last week and this week, everyone in the class asks such good questions. I’m impressed by this group’s willingness to learn, their ability to pay attention and grasp entirely new and foreign concepts, and their excitement to try what they’ve learned in their labs. What a pleasure it is for me to be counted among this Crew. Next week is sure to be even better.
