I recently joined the Young Makers’ Tech Club, a club that meets every other Saturday at the Develop Centre for talks and workshops on tech and coding. As part of my STEMM Award, I’ve decided to blog about what I do there each session.
Session One
My first time at the club was on September 16, which is what I’m going to write about in this blog post. I went to a great workshop on colouring in Photoshop. This was really interesting as I learned all about the “Layers” system Photoshop uses, as well as the different tools for colouring pictures.
A boy at the club gave a talk about how he’d learned electronics over the summer and made a Nixie Clock. He brought the clock to show us and also showed us some of his designs, and photos of him working on the clock.
There was also a workshop on writing code for the micro:bit. The micro:bit is a miniature computer that you can connect to any computer or phone. You can write code for it very easily in the online Blocks editor, download it onto the micro:bit and run it.
I wrote a program that made the micro:bit display the X-Men logo on its “screen” (a grid of LEDs on one side of the circuit-board) and display the words “X-Men” scrolling across the screen. I have a micro:bit at home and I’m looking forward to writing more code for it: there are lots of great tutorials on the micro:bit website.
I was so busy doing workshops that I didn’t have time for much else that session. However, the Young Makers’ Tech Club does let people use the computers for whatever they want. I noticed they had lots of different coding software, design programs and game making programs. I’m especially hoping to learn to use Unity.
I think I’ll have lots to write about the Young Makers’ Tech Club in the future. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone between 10 and 18 years old who is interested in technology: coding, robotics, electronics, design, or anything else you can do on a computer. You can learn a lot at talks and workshops, or just have fun doing whatever you want on the computers at the Develop Centre. You can even work with others and get new ideas for projects.
I think the most interesting part of my first time at this club was seeing all the different things you can do there. No matter what aspect of technology you’re interested in, there are other people there who are also interested and can help you learn more and get ideas.
Phoebe is 15 years old and is very interested in coding, robotics and science. She is working towards the Bronze Youth STEMM Award. She is writing a blog about everything she’s learning at the Young Makers’ Tech Club.
