Our own little Moonhack adventure

Spending time in schools with students playing and exploring through coding is one of the little pleasures of working at Code Club Australia. While we usually support schools to create their own code clubs, sometimes we get to dive in and play ourselves.
On the 17–18 July Nicola, Code Community Engagement Manager Extraordinaire, and I headed off to hang out with Fiona Hudson of Henderson College at Mildura as a prize awarded at the Future Schools Conference earlier this year.
With our Ozobots and Scratch Moonhack Projects in hand, we jumped on our supersonic space mobile and headed off to work with students from Year 3 through to Year 7. We even had kindy students come and play with the Ozobots at lunchtime! No age is too young to start coding….
Ozobot Space Story


In our ever popular Ozobot Space Story activity, we ask students to write and draw a narrative in which their Ozobots travel through space. Their own Ozobot Journey!
We set students a challenge to draw their narrative and read out their story in a mini-exhibition.
As they craft their story, and draw out the pathway on butchers paper, and include at least 4 different Ozobot codes.
This activity ignites imagination and gets students exploring code in a multi-modal environment. It teaches them that coding isn’t always about using a screen or designing a game. it can be about story telling and creative writing too!
At lunchtime the kindy kids came in and played with the story maps created by their older peers.
Give it a go!
Moonhack Scratch Project

While Nicola was hanging out with the Ozobots, I ran through our Moonhack Scratch Project with students from Year 3 through to year 7.
Moonhack is our world record setting event. In 2016 we had 10,207 students coding on the same day, this year we are trying for even more!
This year Moonhack is on Tuesday 15th August, and would love you to join us.
To help people participate in Moonhack we have created 3 projects in Scratch, Scratch Jnr and Python. All projects are based on Moon themes. In the Scratch Project students create a project in which Scratch Cat jumps a little while on Earth, and very high while on the Moon. It’s a great activity to tie in with Science Week.
Sign up now, and check out the Online Facilitator Guide to get ready to run Moonhack in your space! It’s loads of fun and completely achievable for students form age 8 through to 18!!!

We had a great time at Henderson College and we love that every students we worked with tried hard, learnt some new skills and sis their best! Thanks guys and keep on coding!!

