Goodbye 2077

Lots of things going on now. I'm sure I can still be tracked from 2077, but I won't be posting anything else as I assimilate into the culture and leave the future behind me. It wasn't great in 2077. But it is fascinating in 2018, and I know I can make a difference here.

Molokai Service Project Final

The workshop was a success even though we had a lot of set-backs. The weather was really cloudy and we weren't able to land on Molokai on our first attempt. It was interesting having to come up with some alternative options. I was a bit worried about how we were going to be able to figure something out. Some of our ideas were to try to give the workshop remotely, but in hindsight, it definitely would not have worked because of internet connectivity issues. We also thought we might have a tutorial session with Loke to walk her through how to give an hour of code workshop or see if we could present it remotely with her students during the week.  THANKFULLY, it did not come to that, and on our second attempt to land on Molokai, we were successful. I'd never been.

Molokai is beautiful and the landscape looks wild and untamed. It is absolutely gorgeous. I secretly long for a simpler life despite my interest in online activities and technology advancements. The students we had in the workshop were sweet, very quiet, but with their own enthusiasm. We got to share the Nintendo Labo with them, the foam note cards worked perfectly, and we ended up making it through our three ideas (sequences, loops, and conditionals) with the workshop. The internet connection was a complete wash. We had 20 chromebooks, but the connection was so slow, it would have made it too frustrating and almost impossible to do tasks individually. We thought on our feet, and ended up doing the workshop as a group.

I hope that some of the teachers and parents present will continue to encourage their students to learn coding. I had a wonderful experience at the workshop, so much so, that I will look for service opportunities like this in the future. Here we are altogether after the workshop: Keahe, Loke, me, and Dr. Peter!

Molokai Service Project Part 3

Dr. Peter wins the week for buying the Nintendo Labo! Dr. Peter, Keahe, my son, and I met at UH to put it together and see if it would work for the workshop.

I provided the Switch to play the created cardboard toys that interacted with the game. We wanted the kids to be able to see where computer science is going and the Switch has the capability to code in the workshop area that enables them to build their own projects from cardboard and code actions to make the items move with the controllers. It’s actually really neat and a bit involved. It took many hands to build the cardboard piano and several hours. 

I also created foam notecards as a tangible representation of the codes that the kids could use to make us move in different directions when they held them up in the air during the workshop. Take a look at what it looks like!