Last Dojo of November
We’ve got tickets left for November 22nd. The last Dojo before Thanksgiving. Get ’em at:
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/seattle-coderdojo-nov-22-at-amazoncom-south-lake-union-tickets-14102463849
December 6th just opened. This will be our last regular dojo session of the year.
http://www.seattlecoderdojo.com/seattle-coderdojo-december-6-at-amazon-com-south-lake-union/
Then we have the Hour of Code on December 13… huge opportunity for beginners to give coding a try. Bring friends, bring your scout troop or church group.
http://www.seattlecoderdojo.com/hoc/
Loaner Laptops, Drivers Licenses, and Coffee
In the past two weeks we’ve had a parent who forgot to take their license when dropping off their loaner and a parent who accidentally got handed another parent’s license and left without noticing it. We were a little short-handed at the loaner desk on that one. Please be careful when getting your license back. We’re trying to make sure as few mistakes happen as possible, but having as many vigilant eyes on the process as possible always helps.
And I want to give a special shout out to volunteer Daphne who brewed 8 pots of coffee on Saturday. Normally one of our early arrivals will brew one so he can have some, and when that’s out, maybe someone brews another. But as parents kept drinking coffee, Daphne kept brewing, making sure every parent who wanted one got a hot cup of coffee. Later she tried to downplay her contribution to the Dojo meetup as inconsequential, but for every one of you who got a hot cup of coffee on a cold Saturday morning, I’d bet it meant something.
This is the volunteering story that doesn’t get the glory… making sure the loaner laptops are in good condition and get checked in and out, making coffee, introducing new people to old hands. But these are the things that make it pleasant to come to CoderDojo, make it a nice time. So to Margalit, Daphne, Don, and all the other folks who are helping smooth out the bumps and make our members feel welcome, thank you. You do a lot.
Minecraft update
On Saturday we got the development environment working on most of the teen mentors’ machines, finding some pain points that we could prepare for in advance. We had trouble with one Chromebook, but not another, so I’m going to try to troubleshoot that on my Chromebook this week, get our last teen mentor set up, and then we’ll dive into the documentation to try to turn this all into a fun and engaging class.
Sign-ups will not begin until January with a planned mid-February start. The process for signing up (most likely a lottery because we’ll have a lot more kids than seats) will be announced in the newsletter in January. The newsletter is also posted to the site, so there should be no one who has to ask how they get their child signed up.
If you do ask, depending on when you ask, the answer will either be “it’ll be in the newsletter” or “it’s in the newsletter.” 🙂