Today in Strawberry: We had a number of exciting events today: In the morning we played "Wells Fargo" with Cerrito at the park for our weekly Cerritoberry meeting. After snack a number of children were bit by rattlesnakes on the Oregon Trail. The wagon teams had to use an old pioneer first aid book (the Internet) to quickly look up cures the pioneers used in hopes of avoiding having to cut off the leg with a rusty hand saw. From rubbing the wound with gunpowder and salt, to cutting away the bite and bleeding it out, the teams found a way. They chose not to rub it with horse manure and whiskey, or to drink whiskey to excess to thin the blood and dilute the poison. I believe our wagon train is dry anyway. Regardless, these were several of the techniques used in the past to cure a poisonous bite the kids discovered through frantic modern research.
The icing on our day was a visit by Ali Portovi and presentation about computer coding. Ali began with a short video produced by his brother that included interviews with legendary computer programmers from organizations such as Microsoft and Facebook. Ali then led a demonstration of basic commands, followed by the students using
Blockly Maze to learn the basics. Blockly Maze has similarities to Scratch, however it uses a step by step approach to train the programmer. After the students successfully navigated a number of mazes, Ali closed with a look at how to apply the same ideas and expand them on
Scratch.
Ali's presentation
Demonstration of command coding
Using Blockly Maze
Looking at Scratch
Thank you Ali!
