Wednesday, May 7, 2014

The Family that Geeks Together...

Last Saturday was the first ever DevFest Family - a family coding and technology conference organized by the good folks at the Utah Google Developer's Group.We had such a great time geeking out together and Ben, Sasha, and WanYing even got to write their first lines of code!  An all-around great day. Oh, and the fact that we came home with around $400 worth of goodies definitely didn't hurt.

If you're in the area, whether you are technologically inclined or not, this is a fun, friendly, low-pressure, high-entertainment way to introduce your kids to the world of computer science.  Definitely mark the link, follow GDG Utah on Google+, like the Facebook page, and don't miss out on your chance to attend the fall event.

Ben writes his first code using Scratch.  He also successfully finished the Angry Birds Hour of Code - I know because I got an email congratulating me that my child "pig butt" completed the Hour of Code.  I'm proud on so many levels.
We had fun learning basic programming skills with Robot Turtles
And we got to design and decorate rockets!
Ready to launch...
...and off it goes!
As if our awesome tshirts, lunch, and fun classes weren't enough, every family also got a Raspberry Pi! This is our 3rd Pi and the boys are already plotting projects. WanYing was very interested in splitting the Pi until she found out that it wasn't "raspberry pie" - her enthusiasm plummeted after learning we had gotten a little computer instead of a dessert.

The whole day was great, but the highlight by far was Sasha winning a new Chromebook 11! DevFest Family was sponsored by a bunch of great local businesses and during lunch the organizers gave out a passport that included each sponsor's logo. Everybody who visited each sponsor's table was entered into a drawing for one of two Chromebooks and our Sasha was one of the two lucky winners!

Sasha was over the moon at her good luck and we are all pretty excited about the new family laptop.  A Chromebook is an excellent addition to the family technical arsenal, especially a free Chromebook!  Woo hoo!

DevFest Fam was a great adventure for the whole family.  We all had a great time, learned a little, played a lot, and got to spend a fun day exploring technology as a family.

We can't wait for DevFest Fam to come back this fall! Now to start plotting the classes we will teach...

1 comment:

Claron said...

Thanks for the post showing kids having fun being geeks at DevFest Family. I had fun with six of my granddaughters there. 2 of my granddaughters in the coding lab.

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