Posted 18 Oct
MOD. 
A special guest post from MOD.YAB member, Eleanor Brown
A few months ago I was asked to join the MOD. YAB. Which is the Youth Advisory Board for MOD. (You can check it out here!) Being a part of the YAB has already taught me a lot, including how much learning and school has changed.
As a member of the YAB, I got asked to give input on a workshop that MOD. did for Hybrid World Adelaide. I also volunteered at said workshop Saturday the 7th of October. The idea was to give teenagers a chance to play with some of the robots that MOD. had. Specifically, a little bot called Cosmo (you can see a Cosmo in the photograph). Cosmo can recognise faces, play games and does tricks. This all works through an app you can get on your phone or tablet. Another part of the app is the Code Lab. In this you can string together a set of actions for Cosmo to preform. We had the kids come up with a story board and then implement it. With some suggestion from us, who were more familiar with the app.
There were two sessions and in my first session I worked with a girl who was so quick at it we ended up improvising a little obstacle course for her to have Cosmo run. She still had the robot complete it from start to finish before the session was over!
It was crazy to me at first but talking with her and another girl in the second session, it made sense. Back when I was their age there weren’t as many chances to do coding in school. These girls had loads of them and were taking advantage of it! The even crazier thing is I’m only 24! So it’s not like it’s been a long time since I was in school but it’s changed so much!
I know a lot of people who have always been interested in things like coding. They did it outside of school though in computer programs like game maker or by building websites. The only time they did it as a part of school was when a teacher let them create something as part of a project. So it’s great to see more chances for kids to do this kind of stuff outside of the house!
Originally published at Eleanor’s blog on October 18, 2017.
You can check out more of Eleanor’s writing and work here: littleblogofmanythings.wordpress.com