Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Post #2

Post# 2
3-30-15
The planning phase had begun. After deciding to hold club meetings every Monday, we calculated that we only had 6 classes (3:00-4:45)(one hour and 15 minutes for each class.). We discussed goals and what we were going to teach the children. After some thinking, I came up with a pac-man theme. We would teach the kids a section of scratch each class and then using what they learned, they would start making a simplified pac-man game. We would of course guide them through the process, but they would be customizing it however they wanted. We laid out a 7 week plan. Each day we would teach them something new and help them make part of their pac-man game.
So the first topic we had to cover was advertising. We needed to attract kids to our club and make it seem enticing. The problem was that our club started at 3:30 which was about 40 minutes after their school ended. Since I had school to, this was the earliest time I could reach. Therefore, we would lose a lot of potential club members due to the inconvenient timing. At last, we decided to advertise by designing a flyer:


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

How I Got the Idea to Start a Middle School Programming Club

Post#1

3-23-15
On Feb'15 I got this idea to start a programming club for a middle school. I had always had a certain interest in programming and also enjoyed spreading this knowledge to others. When it came to pick a language, I decided to teach Scratch because it is both an exciting language to use and is easy to understand for younger children. Because of its visual programming, it appeals to the younger children more than other languages such as HTML or Java. To put the plan into action, I talked to my dad's friend's wife, Mrs. Verma, who was a director of certain schools. She kindly pointed me to Ms. Jordan, a teacher at ACE charter school. I decided to visit her after confirming a meeting via email. She readily approved the plan. She was a real help and told me that everything I needed to teach the class (computer, projecter, etc.) would be provided. She even volunteered to mentor the club (every school club needed a mentor) and give any necessary assistance. After this, I invited my friend Rishi to help out in conducting the club, because the more the merrier, right? We will meet Ms. Jordan again and finally started our planning for the club.