Putting some Fun into Programming
Our Code Club Worksheets
| Prepare your Raspberry Pi | Starting with Minecraft on the Pi | Build a Minecraft House |
| Scratch and an LED | Minecraft Turtle |
The Code Club meets every Wednesday lunchtime in Boscawen classroom. Children can either take part in coding on laptops or the £25 Raspberry Pi computers. The school as part of the curriculum already has the children learning to code using Scratch, from MIT, and Kodu, from Microsoft, in the classes. The Code Club takes it a little further.
On the laptops the children are leaning how to create a website of their own. On the Raspberry Pi computers the children use a slightly different version of Scratch called ScratchGPIO. This version allows programming into and out of the Pi using LEDs and switches and a whole array of equipment should you have access to it.
An initial session has the children coding in ScratchGPIO to switch an LED off and on. Then trying to make it flash and flash in a pattern. This introduces them to looping commands instead of repeating them.
The Raspberry Pi can also run a special edition of Minecraft Pocket Edition that allows programming into it. This is especially popular with the children as any parent may be aware. Running this on the Pi also allows inputting into and outputting from the game as with ScratchGPIO.