CREATIVITY and coding came together for children in the city today as the second Tamworth Tech Camp continued.

Kids were busy with Makey Makey invention kits, conductive tape and foil, laptops and craft materials when The Leader dropped around.

The projects included Calli Nagle’s paper and cardboard DJ turntable that could be used to trigger music on a computer; and Lucy Lyden’s ukulele, altered so the player could use it to control a computer character.

Instructor Kimberley Nagle, a primary school teacher, said the camp gave children a creative and STEM-related activity during their summer school holidays.

“Just through my teaching, I’ve been facilitating maker spaces and coding clubs for a few years now, and my students were telling me there wasn’t anything creative for them to do during the holidays,” Ms Nagle said.

In other sessions during the tech camps, students have been working on photography and filmmaking, including manipulating images.

Starting from scratch

Joseph Doody, 9, said he’d wanted to go to Tamworth Tech Camp to learn more about the visual programming language Scratch and other coding skills.

He was making a box with screws in it that, when touched, triggered different sounds.

The students had also teamed up to build their own version of the electronic board game Operation, but with a cat patient.

Each child had coded their own program to interact with it when the player’s tweezers missed their mark.

For example, one child’s program would respond with a scream; another’s with an audio file with facts about cats.

Integrating technology

Ms Nagle, who was a forensic scientist before she was a teacher, said she loved integrating technology in all aspects of learning – anything from writing to fractions.

“There’s always ways we can make things interactive and exciting,” she said.

And it was not only fun, but necessary for the jobs and businesses of the future.

“Everything is going to be so heavily integrated with technology,” she said.

“Of course we’re still going to have plumbers and electricians, but their job is going to look different in 20 years.

“Even if they’re not hacking ukuleles and using coding, they will be using problem-solving and creativity and collaborating with each other – all of those skills these kids have to be acing to be able to produce something like this.

“They’re collaborating, they’re working together, they’re testing things out and thinking logically but also creatively …

“These kids won’t have a job where they can just be passive users [of technology].”

Original Article is located on the Norther Daily Leader website here.