Coding@Home – video tutorials
A collection of short videos, do-it-yourself materials, puzzles, games, and coding challenges for everyday use in the family as well as at school.
Coding@Home
EU Code Week’s Coding@Home series builds on the “Coding in famiglia” initiative of the University of Urbino and the CodeMOOCnet Association in cooperation with Rai Cultura. The author of Coding@Home video is Alessandro Bogliolo, a Professor of Information Processing Systems at the University of Urbino, an Italian EU Code Week ambassador and the coordinator of all ambassadors as well as a member of the Governing Board of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition.
You do not need any previous knowledge or electronic devices to do the activities. The activities will stimulate computational thinking and cultivate the skills of pupils, parents and teachers at home or at school.
Introduction to Coding@Home
Introduction to Coding@Home
The explorer
The explorer is the first Coding@Home activity. Move the explorer around the board to reach the target after visiting as many squares as possible.
Right and left
Right and left is a competitive and collaborative game. The two teams collaborate to create a path towards the target, while they compete to use as many as possible of the tiles assigned to them: the yellow team tries to insert as many turns to the left as possible and the red team tries to insert as many turns to the right as possible.
Keep of my path
Keep of my path is a competitive game with two teams. Starting from opposite ends of the board, the two teams build paths that hinder each other. The team that prevents the other from extending their path wins.
Tug of war
Tug of war is a collaborative and competitive game. Starting from the centre of the bottom of the board, two teams (yellow and red) work together to reach the top. The yellow team is trying to reach the boxes on the left while the red team is trying to reach the boxes on the right.
The explorer without footprints
The explorer walks around the board from the starting point to the target, trying to visit all the boxes. As the explorer walks s/he leaves coloured footprints, which allow the robot to follow the steps by interpreting the colours. The game becomes even more intriguing when the explorer clears away the footprints leaving only the colours.
Walk as long as you can
In this activity the challenge is to stay as long as possible on the board using colours instead of footprints. The activity becomes harder when the freedom of movement increases
Cody and Roby
This is a role-playing game with the programmer, Cody, and the robot, Roby. The video introduces the cards of CodyRoby, that we will use from now on to determine movements on the board. Cody will use these cards to give Roby instructions for how to move on the board
The tourist
With the CodyRoby cards, two teams challenge each other to find, in the shortest time possible, the sequence of instructions that will guide the tourist to the monuments that she wants to visit on the board
Catch the robot
Catch the robot is a competitive table top or floor game. The player who captures the opposing team's robot by reaching its square on the board wins. The randomness of the playing cards requires both teams to continuously adjust their strategies.
The snake
The snake is a type of solitaire played with CodyRoby cards. The aim of the game is to guide the snake through all of the squares on the board without biting its tail.
Storytelling
Today's topic is storytelling! Use the instructions of CodyRoby, the footprints of CodyFeet, or the colours of CodyColour, to guide the pawns around the board to tell a story. Scatter different parts of the story around the board.
The two snakes
Using the CodyRoby cards, two snakes move around the board trying to obstruct each other’s movement. The basic rule is very simple: you cannot go back to a square already visited by a snake. The winner is the snake that is able to move around freely for the longest.
Round trip
The teams take turns. The first plots the outward journey while the second must bring Roby back to the starting point. It seems easy but it is not, especially if you only plan the moves in your mind without actually moving Roby...
Meeting point
This time we plan our moves before we start. The two teams put cards on the table to create the sequence of instructions that will move their respective robots, but nothing moves until one of the players says “Start!”. At that point the programming ends and the action begins. The player would said “Start!” wins only if the two robots, each executing the instructions of their team, end up on the same square.
Follow the music
When sequences of programming instructions repeat themselves periodically, it is as if they have a rhythm. If we associate a sound with each instruction, we can guide Roby with music. This is precisely what we will do this time. I will create a program for you using different sounds to represent different instructions, and you will move Roby around the board by following these sound-based instructions.
Colour everything
Can we guide the robots around the board in such a way that they make a drawing with their tracks? In this activity, we play with coding and pixel art, which is forming images by colouring in the boxes on a chequered board, like pixels on a screen.
CodyPlotter and CodyPrinter
What is the difference between a plotter and a printer? Find out by playing this unplugged coding activity.
Boring Pixels!/Using numbers
By giving Roby instructions to form a picture square by square, pixel by pixel, we discover that when many squares in a row have the same colour, we can use numbers to make it more interesting. Computers do the same...
Turning code into pictures
We have now seen that we can create a code that allows us to draw a picture. I have thought of a drawing and used code to turn it into letters and numbers, which I have given you. Take note of the letters and numbers and use the code to reconstruct the drawing.
If you are interested in more unplugged activities, or activities in different programming languages, robotics, micro:bit etc., check out the EU Code Weeks “Learning Bits” with video tutorials and lesson plans for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools. Also have a look at the EU Code Week Learn&Teach resources, where you can find free, high-quality resources from around the world for teachers and students.