The wonderful librarians at Yarra Plenty Regional Library sat down to let us know how their club was going during Covid. Read on to hear about the awesome at-home Code Club sessions. And get in touch if you’d like to share a story from your club! — Nicola, Code Club
Scratch Code Club has been a popular program at Yarra Plenty Regional Library since we began offering sessions in 2017. Interest had steadily grown which allowed us to add Intermediate and Advanced sessions for our keen coders to continue on their creative coding. We had built up such great momentum…
Did you know that there are over 70 million sheep in Australia? Do you know how many people there are — only 25 million!
That means there are three sheep for every person! Imagine everyone in your class or Code Club with three sheep following them!
Sheep farmers lead very busy lives looking after their sheep. They breed and raise the animals, provide feed for them, look after their paddocks and more!
Some sheep farms also have goats! Did you know that goat is the most popular meat in the world! Have you ever eaten goat?
On the farm in…
Wheat is one of the most popular Australian crops. Farmers grow wheat on their farms and then it is turned into flour at a flour mill. Flour is used in all sorts of food; like bread, pizza and cake!
Farmers use big tractors, called combine harvesters to harvest their crops, including wheat, barley and other grains. It has a big comb that travels along the rows of wheat. A cutter bar inside cuts the ends off the wheat and then a sifter separates the grain. The stalks are left behind on the ground.
Water is the most valuable resource that we have. And as Australian’s we live on a continent where there’s not much of it.
Australian’s are the highest consumers of water, despite living on the driest continent! Each of us uses 100,000 litres of water a year, not including the water that is used to grow our food products.
On the farm in our game, they’re just coming out of a drought. That means that it hasn’t rained in a long time!
‘Australia is the driest populated continent on earth, and yet Australians are the greatest per capita consumers of water…
Cotton is one of the most important resources in the Australian agriculture industry. We sat down with Jenny from Cotton Australia to understand what cotton is, how it’s grown and why it’s so important.
Code Club: Hi Jenny, thank you so much for taking the time to tell us all about cotton!
Jenny: Thank you for having me, and my pleasure. I get to talk to lots of people about cotton in my job, but I’m really excited about this chat about cotton and coding!
Code Club: Us too! Can you tell us about why cotton is so important in…
Bees are vital for the existence of the planet. They pollinate flowers which allow fruits and vegetables to grow, just like in our game!
1 in 3 mouthfuls of the food you eat relies on bees for pollination! There are half a million beehives registered in Australia and each hive has 50–60,000 bees! There are three types of bees in beehives the Queen, the Drones and the Worker bee.
The bees that do most of this pollination are European Bees, but we also have 1700 species of Australian Native Bees!
Unlike lots of other animals in Australia, our native bees…
One of the biggest contributors to climate change is the increasing amount of methane in the atmosphere. Some of this comes from animals on farms, including cows and sheep.
When a cow eats its dinner, it turns that into energy (just like you do). If the cow is using less energy to make burps and farts, it may be able to use that energy in other ways, like growing big and strong!
Livestock on farms contributes almost 60% of all the emissions from the agricultural sector, which is equal to about 10% of Australia’s total emissions.
It’s not cows fault…
There are so many amazing real world uses for coding. This week we learn how to code to fly and go fast, really really fast! From aeroplanes to the world’s fastest car, Jet engines power many of the world’s fastest planes, ships and supersonic cars.
Last week, we ran a Virtual Code Club with our friends at Wyndham Library with a special guest, Program Manager and Tech 4 Good champion Tim! He taught us all about coding for Jet Engines before we created our own Scratch game using the Guess The Flag Code Club lesson!
There are so many amazing real world uses for coding and one of our favourites is the possibilities of the Internet of Things! From croc-spotting to sports analysis, there is an endless number of ways that you can use IOT!
Last week, we ran a Virtual Code Club with our friends at Kingston Library with a special guest, TelstraDev Developer Advocate Michelle! She taught us all about IOT and then we learnt some Python using our Raspberry Pi emulator.
Lucky for you, we recorded her chat and you can watch it anytime here!
We caught up with Michelle after the…
Moonhack 2020 has wrapped! A total of 34,170 kids coded with us this week!!
While we’re working and learning from home, Moonhack really reminded us that we have a wonderful community all across the world!
Big thanks to our Moonhack 2020 partners:
- Young Change Agents — creators of the Design Thinking Project
- Rami from Space Australia — who inspired the Space Clean Up Project, and taught us all about space junk in our Virtual Club (catch up here)
- And of course, our wonderful partners at the Telstra Foundation
We’re so proud of all of you. We hope that you had a wonderful time coding these planet-saving projects…
Code Club Australia
Code Club Australia is a nationwide network of free, volunteer-led, after-school coding clubs for children aged 8–15. https://codeclubau.org/
