Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Game Design and Electrical Engineering for Teens

Saturdays, January 13 through March 17, 2-4 pm

Teens who enjoy playing computer games (and who doesn’t?) can attend these free classes and learn to create their own game with Scratch©, while making new friends and having fun.  In ten weeks, they will be introduced to programming while gaining more passion and confidence in computing technology.  Every session at Crowell will be presented in two parts: instruction and experience, giving teens the opportunity to apply their knowledge as soon as theyve learned it.

Scratch© is a visual programming language developed by the MIT Media Lab with a purpose to help teenagers learn to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. It is commonly used by students, teachers, and even college professors in beginner programming classes.  After learning Scratch©, students will learn:  how to program a LED to flash when the push button is down, using if-else statements; how to draw an image on a screen by simply using 0s and 1s; how to create a music piece with a computer, instead of a piano. Teens will work on circuit board construction and perform tasks on the boards by programming.  Participants can apply their creativity, drawing skills, and even music skills to those circuit boards.

Instructor Yifei (Amy) Liu is a student at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy where she is Vice President of the Code Crew.  She also teaches students about programming concepts with Python.  Last summer she attended the iD tech academy - Electrical Engineering & Coding at Stanford University which inspired her to teach this free class in her community.

This class consists of ten Saturdays beginning January 13 through March 17 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm in the Crowell Computer Lab.  It is open to middle and high school students, but there is only room for ten participants so please sign up as soon as possible at the Adult Reference desk or by calling the library at 626-300-0777 extension 579.  Participants must bring their own laptop.