I led a 4-hour pre-conference workshop on coding programs beyond Scratch. I had 16 participants from a variety of backgrounds, most with little to no coding experience. A couple had tried out Girls Who Code Clubs with an experience similar to mine in that it was difficult to hold the club member's attention working on one language for 9 or 16 weeks.
I was really jazzed to lead this workshop...
And then I was freaked out. Talk about imposter syndrome! Who was I to lead a 4-hour workshop on coding? I don't have a CS degree! I don't know any detailed info about any coding language! This panic attack struck the day before the conference, but luckily I was too distracted with maker outreach to really get myself worked up.
Brief overview
Resources
Unplugged Coding Activities: binary Perler bead pins, cup stacking, coding humans
Block-based Coding
Coding Physical Objects
The transition from block to text coding
Project-based Code projects
The fascinating thing about our Perler bead project was how so few of them had used Perler beads. I specifically picked them as our binary medium because I assumed most librarians had used them at some point in their career XD
It's also really weird seeing your own workshop tweeted...
In the afternoon, I sat on a panel discussing the Virtual Reality in Libraries Pilot Project with the Washington State Library and UW iSchool. Look at this lineup!
I spoke specifically on an experience that happened during our drop-in Intro to VR at Vancouver Community Library. We were hanging out with the equipment on a Sunday and one of our ASL Conversation Circle participants stopped by to see what we're doing. Luckily, my colleague Kelsey, who is also in the ASL Conversation Circle, could sign for him. The deaf experience in virtual reality isn't much talked about and our patron struggled. Kelsey had a stroke of genius and used one of the VR handsets to sign to our patron while he was in the Rift. It was pretty cool, but also illustrated the lack of accessibility with this technology.
I also spoke on my experience learning to use Unity and teaching it to Teens during my Teen Tech programs around the District.
On Friday, I partnered with my maker neighbors, Hillsboro Public Library and Multnomah County Library to talk about easy maker projects. We focused on entry-level projects and spent half of our session making with the attendees. It was super fun!
We requested tables in our session, but there weren't any. However, the conference staff were phenomenal and quickly threw some tables up in our room.
We also expected maybe 40 participants, but were blown away by how many people showed up!
Our group of presenters was only able to coordinate one meeting early on in our planning. The rest was coordinated via email (not the easiest task). We decided early on that we wanted to incorporate hands-on making in our maker session. My colleague from Hillsboro, Rob, facilitated the light-up tissue paper flower project.
It was so cool and I loved seeing people with their flowers all over the conference!
Twitter again!
Super excited to see what they'll make :)
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