Beginners Guide to Scratching Maths with things from your kitchen! — Mozfest 2016

Hi I’m Aoibheann, I’m 10 and I’m from Co. Mayo in Ireland. I was really excited when I heard all about Mozfest and was delighted when I was accepted to do a workshop at it all about the raspberry Pi with the explorer Hat pro and how to use it to make coding in scratch interact with physical things you have in your home.

I started using the pi about 6 months ago and I have to say I love it! I learned to code using scratch at my local coder dojo so as yet I have mainly used it on the pi — what I love is that you can use it to do things off the screen as well as on it. We make LEDS come on and off, motors spin and use sensors and buttons in our scratch games. Then I discovered the explorer hat pro its really cool as it has buttons to press, a built on breadboard, built in LEDS and pads on the sides all ready to go. For my workshop I’m using the pads and the LEDs coded to work through scratch blocks.

I have looked at the timetable for Mozfest and I can’t wait to get there, there are some really amazing workshops and things going on. I think I will probably spend most of my time in the youth zone and I have already virtually met some of the others like Elise (Spooktacular Sounds) and Joshua (Edublock) while getting ready for the fest. I can’t wait to meet them for real and to help out in their workshops. I have only used sonic pi twice so I can’t wait to see how Elise uses it to make music.

I have been trying out my workshop at school and in my coder dojo and I’m very nervous but excited at the same time. This is my very first time doing anything like this with people I don’ know but everyone seems very nice and supportive and the team -Andrew and Dorine and my mentor Polly have all been a really big help to me (thanks a million). I’m hoping that the workshops all go well and that it will help me to overcome my nerves and be brave enough to try out new things.