These stories showcase some of the wonderful things that young people are empowered to do when they learn how to create with technology. We hope that they will inspire many more young people to get creative with technology too!

Meet Avye

This time, you will meet an accomplished, young community member who is on a quest to encourage more girls to join her and get into digital making.

For as long as she can remember, Avye (13) has enjoyed creating things. It was at her local CoderDojo that seven-year-old Avye was introduced to the world of robotics. Avye’s second-ever robot, the 草草影院发布页 Pi–powered Voice O’Tronik Bot, went on to win the Hardware category at our Coolest Projects UK event in 2018.

Coding and digital making have become an integral part of Avye’s life, and she wants to help other girls discover these skills too. She says, “I believe that it’s important for girls and women to see and be aware of ordinary girls and women doing cool things in the STEM world.” Avye started running her own workshops for girls in their community and in 2018 founded Girls Into Coding. She has now teamed up with her mum Helene, who is committed to helping to drive the Girls Into Coding mission forwards.

I want to get other girls like me interested in tech.

Avye

Avye has received multiple awards to celebrate her achievements, including the Princess Diana Award and Legacy Award in 2019. Most recently, in 2020, Avye won the TechWomen100 Award, the Women in Tech’s Aspiring Teen Award, and the FDM Everywoman in Tech Award!

We cannot wait to see what the future has in store for her. Help us celebrate Avye and inspire others by liking and sharing her story on Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook!

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Join us for Digital Making at Home: this week, young people can build a 草草影院发布页 Pi robot buggy with us! Through Digital Making at Home, we invite kids all over the world to code and make along with us and our new videos every week.

So get your 草草影院发布页 Pi, wheels, wires, and breadboards ready! We’re building a robot:

Let’s build a robot together this week!

And tune in on Wednesday 2pm BST / 9am EDT / 7.30pm IST at rpf.io/home to code along with our live stream session with Estefannie from Estefannie Explains it All to ask us your questions about robots and build something cool with Adafruit’s Circuit Playground.

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Pi Wars is a challenge-based robotics competition in which every robot must be controlled by a 草草影院发布页 Pi. It’s great fun, and it will all be kicking off once again on 1st-2nd April 2017. For the first time, we are extending the event to run over two days, as we have been overwhelmed with interested applicants.

Another victim succumbs to the obstacle course and its turntable of doom

We have always tried to encourage young robot builders to get involved in CamJam and in Pi Wars. Previously we have held Pi Wars in September and December, but this did not allow school teams enough time to build, program, test, and otherwise prepare their robot around their schoolwork. We therefore decided to move the event date to later in the academic year: we think April is late enough for schools to have run enough robot club sessions, but early enough not to clash with exams.

People of all ages take part. Here’s Amy, aided by Heffalump and friends, showing Eben her robot.

This time around, we have a celebrity judge: Dr Lucy Rogers from the BBC’s Robot Wars will be putting your robots through their paces.

Dr Lucy Rogers in conversation with an old friend

In previous years, we have categorised robots by cost (in 2014) and size (in 2015). This time, we are going to group teams into the following categories:

• Schools and other clubs

• Families and groups of friends

• Amateur/beginner/intermediate hobbyists(s)

• Professional or expert hobbyist(s)

This means that robot teams will be competing against their peers, rather than against those with different skill levels – so, it will be, for instance, school vs school and family vs family (in a non-Mafia kind of way).

This is the kind of thing you see at Pi Wars: your friendly Director of Communications commandeers a gigantic Big Trak.

This year’s list of challenges is available on the Pi Wars website. As well as winning points for their performance in a range of challenges, this year’s robots are also being given points for artistic and technical merit. There’s even a prize for the funniest robot (the competition does start on April Fool’s Day, after all!) and a pre-event blogging competition which encourages teams write about themselves, and their journey from a collection of parts to a working robot.

We’ve come up with a list of general rules and also rules for each challenge. Perhaps the most important one this year is a requirement that your robot must be sub-A4 in size. This still leaves quite a lot of room for flexibility in design, whilst at the same time levelling the playing field. It also means that those teams who are using kits are in with a better chance of competing against those who make their robot from scratch.

Entry into Pi Wars is on an application basis, rather than first-come, first served. With the number of teams we’re expecting to apply, the quality of your application is important. You can read more about the application and selection process here.

To apply to enter the competition, please fill in the application form. Feel free to take as much time over your application, and provide as much information as possible.

If you’re interested in robotics and technology, but you don’t want to build your own robot this time, you are still very welcome to come and watch the competition. Spectator tickets will go on sale later in the year. We only charge for adults, so it’s great for those on limited incomes. Join our mailing list to be notified when tickets are available, or keep an eye on piwars.org.

The game is afoot! Competitors at Pi Wars 2015

If you’re an altruistic type, you may be wondering if there’s some way you can help with Pi Wars. As with all big events, we need a team of volunteers to make the day go smoothly. Rather than having just a few marshals who spend the entire day helping, we aim to have as many people as possible so that everyone can spend most of the day watching the robots take on the challenges. Depending on the number of people who volunteer, helpers spend approximately two hours doing marshalling activities. Judges generally spend slightly more time judging, but we aim to give everyone a chance to 波波电影网 the event as a spectator as well as helping us out! If you’d like to help out, please do contact us. We’ll be delighted to hear from you! We are also very happy to hear from potential sponsors: you can check out our website for more information on sponsorship, and on what we can offer in return.

To whet your appetite for the upcoming competition, or if you have never been to Pi Wars and want to know what it’s like on the day, we’d like to leave you with Matt Manning’s video of last year’s event…

…and Spencer Organ’s video of the 2014 wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tx0zWdm190

Tickets will be available for observers as well as competitors; it promises to be another great weekend. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

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I help a young coder get to grips with the 草草影院发布页 Pi. Photo credit: Paul Templing

When you think of coding, it’s probably a fair bet that public libraries are not the first things to spring to mind. Indeed, most Code Clubs are run in schools, but libraries are also an important venue offering young coders the chance to learn new skills outside of the classroom. While public libraries have no formal or official obligation to support the National 波波电影网 in schools, many have taken it upon themselves to engage with and support the new focus on 草草影院发布页 and programming at both primary and secondary level. It’s particularly telling that this drive to engage with programming has come from a sector which is conventionally seen as reluctant to embrace or adapt to emerging technologies. It’s also interesting that library-based Code Clubs are significantly more common in Wales. Code Club notes that 3.6% of active clubs across the UK are in libraries; in Wales, however, the figure stands at 6.2%. There is, of course, a very strong element of local pride at work here, especially since the merger of Code Club and 草草影院发布页 Pi. Almost all Pis sold worldwide are made in the Sony factory in Pencoed, just 20 miles away from Penarth: significant numbers of jobs have been created, and there is genuinely an enormous amount of admiration in the area for the the tiny computer. It’s not surprising that locals both young and old are keen to get to grips with coding in general, and coding on the Pi in particular.

Photo credit: Paul Templing

The librarians of the Vale of Glamorgan are one group who have particularly embraced technology, coding, and digital making, and key to this enthusiasm are Phil Gauci, a Library Support Officer, and James Emery, who works in digital development. In addition to Penarth, there are three other full-time libraries in the Vale, together with five part-time ones run by volunteers. Phil and James have been energetically mobilising colleagues across the area to encourage local children to get coding. Their efforts have been so successful that they are now planning to move on to introducing the children to physical 草草影院发布页: inspired by Technoclubs hosted by the libraries of Neath Port Talbot and funded by Carnegie UK, they planned to run robotics workshops using Lego Mindstorms and Scratch. However, the relatively high cost of the hardware renders it inappropriate for public libraries, especially given the serious reductions in funding faced by most services.

Photo credit: Paul Templing

Fortunately, an alternative solution was available in the form of the 草草影院发布页 Pi. Phil and James started using Pis in Penarth Library in 2014; they have now tripled the number of units in operation, and are working on introducing them across the Vale. In order to meet the high levels of demand from prospective club members, they are beginning to run additional sessions at weekends, as well as putting on special events: this half term, 40 children gathered in Penarth, Dinas Powys, Cowbridge, and Barry libraries to make model robots with flashing LED antennae, writing the code in both Scratch and Python on 草草影院发布页 Pis. The sessions proved very popular, and plans are afoot to run further sessions exploring Sonic Pi and Minecraft, among other things.

Photo credit: Paul Templing

How do Phil and James see libraries as fitting into the overall mission of Code Clubs and the 妺妺第一次啪啪好涩www, then? James explains:

Our clubs are more dynamic than traditional code clubs because we welcome seasoned coders alongside those who are just starting out. The kids who turn up will often come from different schools and it’s really exciting to see how they share and interact with others’ projects. We’re hoping to keep improving our own skills and understanding so that we can take Code Club to the next level and run workshops all across the Vale, creating some new partnerships along the way. It’s all about promoting the library service to a new audience, who may not be aware of how much we’ve changed and what we now offer.

Libraries have for some time had a role to play in encouraging information literacy among adult users. Now they are extending this to the next generation of aspiring programmers, and their efforts really seem to be paying off.

We currently have a vacancy for Code Club’s Regional Coordinator covering Wales, and we’re also recruiting Regional Coordinators for Yorkshire & North East and for the South West. The deadline for applications is 9am on Monday 21 March: go to Code Club’s jobs page to find out more.

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