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).