the limits, the funnier it is. It makes Kelsey do
something ridiculous. It allows them to play first
and learn second.
We have to give credit to Mike Cotterman,
who’s the third member of CodeJoy we brought
on officially this year. He really developed
CodeJoy.Live, which is our coding platform.
KELSEY: The platform incorporates two different
types of coding built in. There’s one that we call
batch coding, where kids can create an algorithm
and send that sequence to us. And then we can
look at the kids’ different codes and choose which
ones to show and use on the robots to scaffold the
learning using their actual code. The other type
of coding is live control. With sub-1 second delay,
kids can press buttons on their screen and move
real robots to do things like drive a robot car or
aim and shoot with a cardboard golf putter. So
there’s less coding knowledge in that, but again,
it shows you why robotics.
MAKE: It takes some courage to start
something in a pandemic.
KELSEY: In some ways the pandemic has
helped. We formed this company with the
assumption that we were going to have to explain
to people what video conferencing was. And
suddenly everybody knew what it was and how
to use it, and all the kids had Chromebooks and
Wi-Fi, because they needed it for school! And
all of this groundwork that we thought we were
going to need to build, within a semester it was
suddenly there.
MAKE: It’s very rewarding to see you bring
these experiences to kids who get to feel
something, not just learn something, but feel
something and have fun.
KELSEY: Well, neither of us actually went to
school for computer science or engineering. We
both discovered our interests in robotics through
fun ourselves — Matt with puppeteering and
video production, me as a teacher seeing my
students’ joy. And that’s our goal with CodeJoy —
to get kids to have fun with computer science and
robotics during our shows, so that they approach
their next opportunity to code or make a robot
with enthusiasm and confidence.
• Read more from our conversation with
Kelsey and Matt at makezine.com/go/
codejoy.
• Find CodeJoy online at codejoyeducation.com.
Live-controlled Matt the Robot interacts with students
from his “studio under the sink.”
Students submit code to CodeJoy.Live, controlling the
cardboard robots during their live shows.
Kelsey finishes a show with live Q&A from learners.
19
make.co
M78_016-19_CodeJoy_F2.indd 19M78_016-19_CodeJoy_F2.indd 19 7/13/21 9:27 AM7/13/21 9:27 AM
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.