International Womens Day 2014 Celebration

After attending this session, the participants can register on the spot for regular sessions for the next 4 weeks at the following times :

Saturdays 10 - 11 am
Saturday 4:30 - 5:30 pm
Sunday 4:30 - 5:30 pm
 

Solving Real-world problems using Computational thinking

Recently, one of the students/co-instructor of the class got an award from Delhaize for solving a real-world problem using computational thinking steps learnt in class :

Last Sunday, 20 minutes before the store closed, AD Delhaize (Strassen), 1 rte d'Arlon, 8009 Strassen, Luxembourg faced an operational issue. The entry door in the parking floor stopped working. The shoppers could not enter Delhaize and those who had finished shopping could not enter the parking floor. Two officials of the store who were on the parking floor for managing trolleys, tried their best but could not open the door. The customers trying to enter, started to feel frustrated, as all the grocery shops in Luxembourg would close in the next 20 minutes as it was a Sunday. Customers on the other side were equally restless, as there was no other way to reach the parking floor with their loaded trolleys. It was an embarrassing moment marring reputation of Delhaize. 

One smart 12-year computer science student, analyzed the problem, applied computational thinking and opened the door to the astonishment of the customers waiting on both sides. They clapped for this intelligent boy, named Atreyam Sharma. Thereafter, the door started working normally. Not only did the boy save the reputation of the store, but saved them spending possibly hundreds of euros to call in a Technician to resolve the problem. As a gesture of appreciation, the management of Delhaize recognized the contribution of Atreyam by inviting him to meet Director-in-charge of the store who personally spent time with him and handed over rewards.

Cheers to Delhaize! Cheers to Atreyam!! Real-world problems - beware of the programming enthusiasts in Luxembourg!!!

Introduction to Computer Science - An hour of Code - March session announcement

 

As you already know, computers are used in our lives in more ways than we can imagine. As time passes, this trend will continue. Whether one chooses to be a doctor, fashion designer or space scientist, some knowledge of computer science and coding is beneficial. We do not need to wait till later to bring logical, problem solving thinking into our kids. In the future, we will need more programmers and coders than we have. You can watch this video to know more

Please feel free to register and pass along to your network.

Graph paper programming

Session 3

As always, we started with a review session of the last lesson. Then we got onto writing algorithm to draw a pattern made on graph paper such as shown below.

First we wrote text to describe it. Everyone soon realized why it was important to use code or programming key to write algorithms. So we then replaced the text by symbols. Then the class was able to see that if the same symbol was repeating, it is possible to come up with an easier way to depict it. For example

                           instead of 



We then got into the concept of functions and parameters. After that everyone wrote shorter algorithms instead of the long one originally written, using functions and parameters, to draw the pattern. Then they passed onto a fellow mate to try to make the pattern to see if the instruction set was good.

 

Some children also opted to do a more difficult pattern with two colours and used functions in an optimal manner. Overall a good session where basic concepts used in many programming languages was explained in simple words! After the break with warm milk and cookies, it was time to try different coding games like light-bot, kodable or code.org to practice the concepts learned.

Another nice weekend of coding completed!