Space Junk — meet the winner!
Meet Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn is the creator of the winning design project for the Moonhack project, Space Junk. In 2023 Moonhack trialed a new type of coding project, one that encouraged coders to create their own digital solution using a coding platform of their choice. We received hundreds of projects from around the world, with Kaitlyn’s project being selected by our panel of judges as the winner.
Kaitlyn started coding in year 1 when her older sister started teaching her how to use Scratch at home. In year 4 Kaitlyn took part in her first Moonhack challenge. That year the theme was all about satellites, both natural and man-made, and the Moonhack challenge became a big part of her coding journey.
Kaitlyn likes all kinds of games when she is coding, but her biggest inspiration comes from clicker games. She knows that kids love to play these styles of games, which is what encouraged her to include this in her winning project. Players need to click on the space debris to be able to save Earth, earning points along the way, and hopefully keeping enough lives to save Earth!
Kaitlyn’s winning project was created using Scratch, and is a gamified learning tool. This is what impressed the judges the most, being able to create a game that shared information about space junk and encouraged the player to come up with a solution. The game is fun and able to be played by all age levels. The judges also commented about the purposeful use of variables inside branching statements to control game play, as well as the use of broadcasts to ensure the interaction of elements was accurate.
The game starts off with the astronaut being a teacher, sharing information about space junk and the problems that it poses. This talking leads to the current solutions, and asks the user to suggest their own ideas about clean up.
Then the fun really begins with the space junk heading for Earth and the player needing to click it to remove it, before it reaches Earth. The judges really loved this aspect of the project and admitted to playing it multiple times to reach success.
The prize for this Moonhack project, was to have the project turned into a Code Club Australia tutorial. And we are excited to make it’s debut alongside this blog post! Congratulations on your winning entry Kaitlyn, and thank you for sharing your project with all of our Code Clubs!
Happy coding.
Kaye
Code Club Australia
