Date: Jan 19, 2019
Long time I have not checked on their progress at The Lab @ Katong V.
So, today, I just dropped by and see what they are up to.
Two things impressed me.
- Jay finally is doing quite a bit of coding exercise. I am not talking about graphical drag and drop type of programming (i.e. scratch similar). He is doing actual Python coding.
- Jay finally comfortable using two hands 10 fingers proper typing on the laptop. Yeah! (instead of 2 fingers typing).
See the background me smile so happily? Hahaha
Dig deeper, and found out that he is trying to do a sorting on his name list. WOW, I am impressed again.
So, nothing stopping the father to give his son a little bit of tips.
So, we worked manually on the paper to figure out what is the best way to do sorting.
Back in the old days, we learned Bubble Sort, Merge Sort, Insertion Sort, Shell Sort & Selection Sort algorithm.
So, I decided to teach him the easiest of all Bubble Sort which is a comparison type of sorting method. Basically, you compare two numbers and do the swapping to put them in order.
In order to teach him, we need to visually work out the sort algorithm. See how the numbers get sorted.
Then, we put them into the program. As I don’t really know how to code Python, so, he is the one teaching how to code syntax in Python. Hahahaha
And it works!
Mean while, Kay Kay is working on his challenges too. Every time he come to class, he have to work on the problem solving challenge. And it seems that he has done it too.
Let’s go and check out his code.
Ah, he still in the scratch like coding platform. The Blocky coding.
Good … as long as he can make his robot move and make sounds.
And the older students here started to program the Raspberry Pi robots instead of Lego EV3. Only the younger students are using the EV3 now.
I think coding is important.
I have bought a couple of NXT and EV3 for Jay and Kay. Guess what? They don’t play or code at home. But they love to come to the Lab to code. I guess, they love the interactions with other students here at The Lab, and the love to interact with the instructors too. It is like their home or play ground like that.
I was watching Kay from a side… and he was like doing his coding while chit chatting with his classmates here. And I think that is what they like about going to the Robotics class instead of doing it all by yourself at home.