SEMINAR IN
PROGRAMMING WITH THE FINCH ROBOT
WAS HELD IN THE COMPUTER HALL AT THE LIBRARY OF "D. P. SIVKOV" COMMUNITY
CENTRE IN THE TOWN OF NOVA ZAGORA
On October 21st, 2016, under the initiatives of the European code week / 15 – 23 October 2016/, in the computer hall at the library of “D. P. Sivkov” community centre in the town of Nova Zagora was held a seminar in programming with the Finch robot. The seminar was organized by experts from "Sava Dobroplodni" Regional Library - Sliven.
A
short presentation about the history of programming and programming
languages and opportunities for programming with the Finch robot was
presented to the students
from the ninth form of Professional School of Engineering and Technologies
"Аtanas Dimitrov"
in the town of Nova Zagora.
The students learnt how to code
with the programming language Snap! t
hat
manages the robot.
Snap! makes it easy to learn the principles of visual
programming by working with images, sounds and painting, gives freedom for
modeling of various objects from the environment.
The Finch robot is a two-wheeled robot
with bird-like features; it can be programmed to move, talk, dance, and
paint or even made its beak to shine. It has many sensors and mechanisms
that engage the eyes, ears -as many senses as possible.
The Finch currently supports over 12
programming languages and environments, including Java, Python, C ++,
Visual Basic, Scala, and Processing.
It
is used for training in programming for children and students. It is
specifically designed for computer science education for students in the US.
It has been introduced in teaching programming in schools in the United
States.
The Finch robots used in training and software are placed at "Sava Dobroplodni" regional library’s disposal by the US Embassy in Bulgaria and the "Global Libraries Bulgaria" Foundation in order to allow experts from the library to help many children to make their first steps in programming in an interesting and funny way.
Computer
sciences nowadays touch every scientific discipline and they are an
important part of most new
technologies. Training with the Finch robot can help motivate students to
focus on computer sciences, to realize
that this is an area which they will have fun to explore and which will
allow them future career
development. Therefore, more libraries should accept as a mission their work
in this direction.