Thursday - December 8th

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (AFTER SCHOOL)

Bring your own snack.

(No peanut or tree nut items, please.)

THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS WORKSOP!

What a great group! Miss Henry and I had so much fun working with the students using the Hummingbird and Finch. Thanks for being part of this special workshop. I learned about the Finch and the Hummingbird from a robotics course I took at CMU a few years ago. You may remember the robotic MOTH I created to tell the story of the First Computer Bug. It was made during my robotics course at CMU that I attended thanks to a Scholarship from the National Science Foundation. (Below) You can see a video of the Moth I made and programmed using the Hummingbird. I used the same materials that you used today for my Robot! In the video you will see an image of Grace Murray Hopper. She is one of the first FEMALE computer programmers. Her birthday is celebrated tomorrow and she is honored during Computer Science Education Week. It was in her program where the they actually found a moth which stopped the computer program from running. This is where many believe the the term "debugging" originated due to this event. If you ever go to the Smithsonian Museum you can see the log book where the event was recorded. (See Video below.)

I met Dr. Tom Lauwers, the roboticist who was created the Hummingbird and the Finch during that robotics course that I took. You may have met him when he visited our school two years ago. I have been a teacher Ambassador for CMU's Create Lab for a few years now and I love sharing the fun of creating and programming robots with other teachers and students.

I met Miss Henry in September and had the opportunity to work with her and some other volunteers at a MakerFaire this month in Rochester, NY. I loved how she was sharing the HummingBird and Finch and told her how I wanted to have a special workshop during Computer Science Education Week at St. Louise. She lovded the idea and was happy to be part of it. We enjoyed planning this workshop together for Computer Science Education Week and to feature two of BirdBrainTechnologies products for the HOUR of CODE. Miss Henry is a former teacher who works as the Professional Development Coordinator for BirdBrainTechnologies, LLC. which is based in Pittsburgh.

I was fortunate enough to get two small grants from the Make Activities Count program sponsored by McDonalds and was able to purchase some these devices for our school. You may have see the Gorgon Robot that the Tech Team students made a couple years ago. We put it on display during our Ancient Coin Museum Exhibit in January. We hope to add more robotic devices to our school as we build our STREAM program this year, so watch for updates!

I will be sharing more photos from the workshop on this site, so stay tuned.

Mrs. Poerio

A VERY SPECIAL thanks to Miss Henry of BirdBrainTechnologies for helping to making this event so fantastic. You can learn more about the Hour of Code on the code.org website. And check out the links to the activities for the Hummingbird and Finch on the code.org site and check out the links to the HummingBird and Finch above. We will do more with both of these great products at school!

Keep coding everyone! And Happy Computer Science Education Week. This workshop was the perfect way to generate interest in interactive technology and give the students the opportunity to use problem solving skills, work together as a team, develop leadership skills, learn programming, and use their own creativity to design a robot with materials that they are familiar with using. Thanks again!

PHOTOS fROm the DECEMBER 2016 STL Workshop BELOW