The Month After #Picademy

Life has been extremely busy since #Picademy. I had many activities to do, for the library, to prepare for the solar eclipse. Though this blog has been quiet, I have been making steady progress. I set up two pi's and have been teaching my own sons for practice and troubleshooting. I've ordered 7 pi's and everything to get going. LED's, jumper cables, gpio pinout boards, sense HAT's, camera modules, etc. I've price checked and tried to get a great setup to begin with. As much as I would love pi-topCEEDs, I had to go with a cheaper monitor setup. I went to one of the local universities surplus for monitors and each monitor setup was under $10 (I am getting some donated from a local business too, Yeah!!!). I am currently soldering motors for the Explorer HAT, and I subscribed to the paper version of the MagPi. I reported to our local Kiwanis club about my #Picademy experience and spoke to our local high school's computer science teacher about raspberry pi activities I'm holding in September (she has a high school club she wants to encourage to come participate). I've made a digital flyer and it's out on our library's Web page and Facebook so we can get the word out that pi classes are coming. I spoke with our local newspaper and have a story coming out today to encourage patrons to come learn.  I also have been assisting a young man with his senior project using the raspberry pi for digital signage. Many thanks to #piChatUSA people for giving me direction there. I've flashed SD cards with NOOBS. I've installed and practiced SSH and VNC. (BTW-NEVER even knew before what those were).  Needless to say my pi learning days have just begun. I do feel like I have learned a lot this August and I'm excited to see what September brings.

Lessons Learned By Ruining My SD Card

    I have learned my brain works like cement.  I have all the right ingredients to make a solid, firm foundation, but it takes awhile for that foundation to set and stay for a lifetime.  Just like cement, if I take a step in the wrong direction before the cement is solid, repairs will be needed.  I attended #Picademy and received the right ingredients to go forward with a solid foundation for teaching computing and digital making. I however went forward stepping in a few wrong directions before all the training had been cemented in.  The following tells you of the repairs I needed to make before I could have a solid foundation to work with.
    The first day of #picademy we were taught to take care of our SD cards. They mentioned to keep the SD cards away from magnets. Note-There is a lot of information saying magnets won't effect SD cards, because of the following story, I'm keeping my electronics and cards away from them. Just like a teenager, I allowed the information to come in but not cement into my head.  I came home excited to teach my children and we set to trying to fix an old LED tv to use as a monitor.  My 9 yr old and I were unscrewing the back of the tv and we couldn't get a small screw out of the back of it.  My child thinking outside the box, as usual, grabbed some neodymium magnets and put them next to the screw and pulled it out.  I continued working on the tv while he played with the magnets.  I told him to put them away, but since I was busy tinkering he decided he could get away with playing with them.  I distinctly remember him dropping the magnets right by my raspberry pi and saying, "Oops." I looked up and told him to go but the magnets away, not thinking that they could mess up my SD card, but because I wanted him to be obedient.
     Later that day a friend of mine who is a programmer stopped by.  I told him about #picademy and told him about our scare cam project.  I set up my pi to show him the programming and the functioning camera.  I plugged the pi in and had no boot up.  He mentioned that SD cards can get ruined easily especially by magnets.   LIGHTBULB moment!!!  My mind flashed back to my son dropping the magnets and saying oops.  The whole keeping SD cards from magnets was cemented in.  Unfortunately the hard way!
     Luckily, I had emailed the scare cam photo code to myself.  We pulled up the email and I showed the programmer the code that I had created. He asked me professional questions of why I wrote this or that. I told my friend,  I had no doubt that I could recreate the program in no time and he should come by again.  He said he would come by in a few days.
    I knew I needed to do more on the pi than just enter the code.  I knew I didn't have an SD card with Raspian installed automatically.  I would have to install Raspian on a new SD card.  I had a few at home and believed I had purchased them through a reputable source. I tried to install them but could only install the program and boot it up.  When I made changes to the SD card it would crash and not reboot.  I went to the pi forums and had an expert tell me to check my SD cards, twice.  Once again the #Picademy training was finally cemented in my brain.  I needed better SD cards.  I went to the store bought the cards they recommended at #Picademy. I flashed the cards, booted up the system, made the changes to the wifi country, local time, keyboard, etc. and the pi's booted up correctly.
   Although having the code was a great starting tool, I knew I would have to go back to the beginning. I would need to install the camera to the pi, download the sounds and code them, code a bush button, etc. After making sure I had the correct cards, I went to making the project again.  We had 4 hours to complete this at #Picademy. I had already coded a lot of programs on my SD card when I started the project.  Imagine my surprise when I finished and had my scare cam working again in an hour and a half's time. 
     As I was coding my project, I was thinking really how grateful it was that I had learned all of the above the hard way. As I move forward teaching in the library, I know not to store the hard work of the children by magnets.  I can give them a personal experience on how they should not keep magnets by their pi's.  I would hate to have a child invest hours into a project to have it all lost. I also learned to teach making a backup for work, because some things are out of our control.  I had a great starting point because I had emailed myself some code. I also redid everything I was taught at #Picademy, which was a test which helped me gain confidence in going forward and teaching teachers, children, and others in the future. If I can do it on my own without other computer science majors and #Picademy professionals, I can teach this to my local people.
    In summary the lessons I had by ruining my SD card:
1) Keep SD cards and pi's away from magnets (Ok, store them ALWAYS in a safe place)
2) It always is a good idea to have a backup of your projects stored elsewhere from your pi, especially if it is a large project you don't want to loose it. (Email them to yourself, it works great)
3) Make sure you flash the correct SD card
4) I was taught and given all of the above from #Picademy. I had excellent training.
5) I FAILed forward (First Attempt In Learning)
6) #Picademy means it when they have support for us after the training.  The professional raspberry pi users on the forums kindly helped me with even the basics to succeed in our learning.
    I knew #Picademy was a great opportunity when I applied to attend, I felt like I had a great learning experience when I attended #Picademy, It was cemented that #Picademy was the best PD training I had received in a long time when I came home and had to FAIL forward.
    It's okay I had the above experiences, it helped me repair my cement like brain and cure it for  some very basic but essential skills needed to continue teaching computing and digital making!

I Admit It, I'm A Nerd!

I was accepted to #Picademy in Boise, Idaho this year and I was thrilled. I was sent an email talking about "homework" or preparation for Picademy. I luckily had a raspberry pi already and had tinkered a little with one so I dug in and started learning more in depth.
I went not knowing if I was going to be the one who held the class up or not. I read the list of other participants who teach computer science and are IT collaborators at their schools etc. I am a librarian and I didn't master in computer science!
Day one we were given our swag bags with our raspberry pi. We started simple by learning how to plug in and power our pi. We then went into coding our Raspberry Pi with python and scratch. Our first challenge was turning on LED lights! We also learned about camera, sound, and motors on day one. We learned about many add-ons and HAT's (Hardware Attached to the Top). We had a 15 minute challenge to create and code a project. My team of three consisted of a gentleman from Oregon, myself, and a gentleman from Atlanta (Matt, David, and I)! We decided on wiring two motors with reversed direction built upon Legos to make a paper airplane launcher. Matt coded, David constructed, and I  facilitated and helped where I could. At the end of 15 minutes we had success!
Day two was project day we had 4 hours to code and come up with a project. We had different teams and my team was Nick Grove from Unbound in Meridian and myself. We decided on making a Scare Camera where our pi would be used in a photo booth but when the button was pushed a loud scream, witch cackle, etc would surprisingly come out of the speakers hooked up to the Raspberry Pi and the on board camera would take a selfie picture of the unsuspecting, surprised, person. It was busy day especially for people who had never coded before. We threw in the element of getting the picture to be emailed to a recipient too instead of just keeping them on the pi. We took one task at a time. 1st getting the camera code correct. 2nd setting up the email code. 3rd Attaching the music code. 4th making it so the person could email to themselves from the photo booth. I left knowing my project still needed work. I need to add a loop so the code will repeat without refreshing the run cycle. It was fun and exciting to work on and I was surprised at how much I was able to accomplish with great team members and help from Raspberry Pi professionals.
The Raspberry Pi professionals....Rik from the UK, Andrew, Amanda, Kerry, and Courtney. They taught and helped us all along the way!!! The Raspberry Picademy was one of the most thrilling yet labor intensive professional developments I have ever attended! I loved it and I am sad it is only 2 days long!!!
Bringing it back to the library is going to be exciting and exhilarating.  We have many who attended coding camp this summer and I know the interest is there.  I brought it home and worked with my own 9 yr old child (who after learning how to control LED's with the raspberry pi is convinced he wants to grow up and become a programmer who invents many things and makes a lot of money).