Calliope-Mini Workshop

IGS Glauchau (24.-26.7.2024)

The aim of this workshop was to take children with a basic knowledge of coding to the next level, introducing them to more programming activities as well as working with their hands. So, we put together a three-day summer holiday programme for a dozen motivated children.

This year we chose three projects: an interactive survey board, a robot and a fairy tale generator, all using the Calliope-Mini, a simple computer. The interactive board allowed people to take part in a survey and see the results immediately. The robot was programmed with a few functions, such as saying hello when you press a button and making a noise when you shake it. The fairy tale generator randomly generated a character and a place when you pressed the buttons, and you had to use those two words to tell a story.

The children did a project every day, programming on a laptop and then transferring the program to the Calliope Mini. It might seem like a challenge at first to learn to program, but it’s definitely doable if you take it one step at a time. Then we moved on to the various handicrafts required for the project, combining both the digital and analogue aspects.

At the end we had a small exhibition in the school to show the results. Even the children who didn’t take part in the workshop were able to try out the results and share what they had learned. It’s always impressive to see how quickly children can learn new skills and what they can achieve in such a short time when they are motivated and excited about the project.