We visited Kertvárosi Elementary School at Kőbánya on the occasion of this year’s CodeWeek. We brought a relatively large number of robots with us:

  • the unmissable xylophone-playing robot, which gave us a great opportunity to learn the kids’ version of “Twinkle twinkle”. We are grown up people, but still, we were laughing real hard at certain parts.
  • the reworked RC car. We had some concerns due the decoration on the front bumper which resembles blood, but fortunately neither the kids nor the teachers were bothered by it. But everyone loved the freely movable camera, and one particularly gifted kid decided to shoot a movie titled “The life of a mouse” with something similar.
  • the Initio, the Tiddly, and the Combat chariot were just on exhibition this time, because we had neither space nor personnel to operate them.
  • Rover01 for driving, it was also very popular. Kids didn’t disappoint, and with an outstandingly improbable maneuver they managed to push the Off switch of the RC car with the wheel of Rover01. Luckily no harm was made.
  • The brand new drawing robot kit. We also had its source code on display for learning purposes. It would be a wild exaggeration to call it the most popular topic, but considering the age of participants, it still drew quite good attention.
  • Of course the usual Leap Motion + Homido set was unskippable, as well as our palm sized computer-collection. The latter was most popular with teachers, because they seemed to be less aware of the evolution of SoCs in the last few years.

The most unforgettable moment for us was when a teacher called her class to move on to the next station, and 30 kids cried out immediately in perfect unison with an honest and desperate “NOOOOOO!”. Actually this happened twice. Other feedbacks were also very positive, and we received a kind invitation to next year’s event too.

More info:

Official CodeWeek event: http://events.codeweek.eu/view/21954/robots-and-fun/

The school’s homepage: http://kertvarosi.sulinet.hu/ (right now the event is on the opening page, later you probably have to search for it)

This post is also available in: Hungarian