Technocamps

Technocamps
Instead of this week seminar we went to a Technocamps conference. While there we received lecture and workshop for experts in the field, there knowledge and passion for what they are trying to achieve is contagious I could not help but be impressed by most of the information on offer. 

Technocamps is a project set up to run free lectures and workshops on different ways to engage and motivate young people (11-19 years) on game design, programming, robotics almost anything new, education and ICT based. It is led by Swansea University and concentration on the students of wales and teaching them about ‘computer science and STEM and challenging them to think about the world around them in a different way’, (Technocamps website: http://www.technocamps.com/). 

‘Rather than users of technology we want the young people we work with to imagine themselves as the creator of the next Facebook or next generation smartphone, or better yet something unimaginable that is going to radically change the world.’ Professor Faron Moller, Director of Technocamps. 

While at the conference we were split up into groups to experience the types of workshops that are run, first off a couple of guys where explain how card magic ticks can explain coding each card trick had a type of code so when the ‘magician’ turn away and look back he would see the break in the code and know what card had changed, they had a few good tricks that did impresses children but I not sure if some for they adults in the room fully understood task let alone the children but is a unique way for explain coding and the children were engaged. 

Second was CoderDojo, CoderDojo is a free coding club run by volunteers, to teach students between 5- 17 years to mainly code but also how to develop apps, games, websites, programs and much more. In the workshop that I attended the student were experimenting with code, their task was to try out different codes which would guide there character through a maze. I was surprised at how effective this game was every pupil in the class was interested and their full attention was on their game, I think it left the pupils inspired and therefore was a great teaching tool.