Matthew – 9ZF
We started off on an early morning start for all of us. Alfie and Matt were needed to launch the CodeEU event and Joe and Jonathan were putting some finishing touches to their presentation. Alfie and Matt met up with the boys from Norway and had to attend a presentation.
At the start of the presentation we had a talk on how anyone can use code. It talked about how far you can go with coding. The talk was led by the vice president of the company running the program which would launch coding in Europe.
Alfie was invited onto the interview panel and was speaking to the European Commisioner for Education. They asked him some interesting questions and one question focused on the age of coders. Alfie thought that it would great to start at an earlier age. He admitted that he wasn’t able to do programming in primary school and it would have made ICT more interesting for him. Following on from this, it was shown that coding should start at a much younger age.
We all caught up again later and had an opportunity to look at 3D printing. We were taught by two men who explained a number of different tools. The really interesting feature was the use of the Kinect. He had shown us tools such as AutoCad, Up and Nettfab. Mr Chambers got some ideas from this and may even see what he can do with this when he gets back. We all joked making a school chess board out of the characters.
Following on from this, we started developing card games. We were taught the importance of rules in games and we had to storyboard and develop our own games. This was cut short because we were invited to European Schools Net. They were interested in what we thought about coding. They wanted us to help them with their result. Our interview has been recorded and the footage will help lots of teachers train. Mr Chambers was interviewed about the work he has done on TouchDevelop with us. It was fun.
Following on from this we were taken back to the meeting room for a catch and were then told that we would go to the museum of chocolate! We met up with our friends from Norway and took a walk to the museum. It was great; we got to try 100%, 90% and 70% chocolate. They all had different strengths and it was interesting to see some of the history around this. It was also lovely to see the city! It was so beautiful at night.
After a long and busy day we were taken to dinner at the hard rock café. We all went for the legendary burger and it was delicious.
We have had a great time but were very tired after today! We now have to present our game tomorrow and compete in the competition.
Wish us luck!