WE WANTED TO
HELP EDUCATORS
AND STUDENTS
PUSH PAST THE
FINANCIAL AND
EMOTIONAL
BARRIERS OF
ROBOTICS.
barriers of robotics. What if you didn’t need to
buy expensive robotics equipment to engage in
robotics? What if we could provide students an
opportunity to do robotics even if their teachers
weren’t yet comfortable? What if we could show
both students and teachers how easy and friendly
robotics can be? That is where CodeJoy came
from for me — wanting to invite more students
and teachers to the robot learning party.
MATT: For me, CodeJoy came out of this creative
question about the video conference as an
entertainment platform. How can we make the
video conference look and feel more like a TV
show? How could we bring in multiple cameras?
How do we bring in pre-recorded video? What
does audience engagement look like? How do
we hide the seams of this thing to make this truly
become a live, interactive TV show?
MAKE: Why is teaching robotics without a
robot helpful?
KELSEY: Robotics is such a great entrance into
technology. It’s so real. It jumps off the screen
and grabs you, because something is really
happening. I think it’s a better entrypoint to coding
than straight coding, personally. Plus, robotics
breaks stereotypes. When you make a robot that
brings you joy, it immediately dispels that idea
that coding must be “serious” and coders are
only certain types of people. A robot can look like
anything! That is so inviting to kids and teachers.
MATT: When a robot is a character, well that is
automatically interesting.
KELSEY: Robots require equipment. But even
before that, they require someone to advocate for
buying the equipment, and they require teachers
who know how to use the equipment. In 2017, in
all of the U.S., only something like 36 teachers
graduated with CS teaching degrees. Very few
teachers feel like they are experts in this field. We
don’t want to bypass educators, but we do want to
support them to see the possibilities here.
MAKE: What’s an example CodeJoy project?
MATT: The one that I’m most excited about right
now is our Robot Aerobics show. In this show
students learn to code a set of dancing robots.
Those robots then teach Kelsey the dance
moves created by the students. It’s this hilarious
feedback loop, honestly. The more they push
Kelsey and Matt work on screen and behind-the-scenes
during a show from their studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
18 makezine.com
FEATURES CodeJoy
M78_016-19_CodeJoy_F2.indd 18M78_016-19_CodeJoy_F2.indd 18 7/13/21 9:25 AM7/13/21 9:25 AM
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.