(And yes, that is a Minecraft sword on the wall)
Rockstar has not yet come of age to make school Coding Club, but we found this particular external course over the recent Easter break specifically for younger kids (min age 7. No, Rockstar was not the youngest). Why yes, they had class even on the actual public holidays, to the extent I didn’t immediately realise it was a public holiday (which is fine, just I had to double check it wasn’t a typo on the class schedule).
The above pic is of a full class (well actually a bit over full class) on the public holiday. Language spoken: English. Other language spoken: Cantonese. At least, the only other language I overheard was Cantonese. We were told this class is made up of ISF, Victoria and Kellett school kids, with Rockstar making Kennedy School representation so to speak 🙂
What I found mildly amusing however was that walking to class together, I notice at least a couple Angry Birds bags of the freebie variety from Wellcome’s coupon campaign not too long ago. BUT when they get to class, the kids take these really impressive-looking laptops out of their crappy (fine, well-used) bags 😀 (laptops provided for class upon request, but I’m not sure anyone borrowed them. Frankly Rockstar’s school has more than enough good machines, they just did a major upgrade of inventory over Christmas, so I wasn’t really thinking about Rockstar having his own designated machine or not; that first day it was more Ok, Why Not Bring The Laptop He Uses Regularly At Home Just In Case… But……..!).
On Day 1, we’re all looking for the classroom together (did I mention the public holiday?), the kids enter this new classroom for the first time, and without blinking the first thing they do is look for a power source. Then they calmly plug in and open their machines like pros.
That same first day, the 7 year old seated next to Rockstar leaned over, raised his eyebrows and chirped, “You’re not at 100% (charged laptop battery) for class?!” (Way to kiasu ok, didn’t everyone already plug their machines into power sources…) According to Rockstar, there was a lot of throwing jokes around, good natured mouthing off that included ribbing the teacher about how he was “probably like, 50 years old” (he’s 31), and the youngest kid had problems sitting still to complete the later tasks without being repeatedly reminded to stop snooping at everyone else’s screens (i.e. they’re not erm, robots who sit at their screens and don’t move)…
So they’re little kids, except…. they’ve all got these shiny laptops in their Angry Birds bags.
This looks like something exciting for Rockstar. What activities did they do for this class?
Used a sprite to draw shapes via Scratch… And of course, there was some use of redstone in Minecraft…