The Amazing Lab, among the engineers

Today we were present at the Order of Chartered Engineer’s headquarters (Zona Centro), presenting our project and taking part in a debate about the Challenges of Teaching Computer Engineering, organized by the Regional Council of the College of Computer Engineering.

Capture the Flag!

Yesterday we challenged a group of third and fourth graders from the 1st João de Deus school in Coimbra (Portugal), to participate in a cryptographic Capture the Flag event, with lots of padlocks, secret boxes with encrypted clues, and real flags.

Everyone got his own cryptographer manual and teams had to collaborate to decrypt the messages and solve the riddles.

A big “Thank you” to the 1st Jardim-Escola João de Deus de Coimbra, to our friends at Feedzai and to the Departamento de Engenharia Informática – Universidade de Coimbra, for supporting the Amazing Lab project.

Finally, a heartfelt recognition to Prof Bill Buchanan OBE from the Edinburg Napier Univeristy, which inspired this activity.

Diploma day!

Today we visited our friends from the 1st Jardim-Escola João de Deus de Coimbra, to deliver the conclusion certificates for our introductory programming course. 

We also promised to return next year, with new challenges! 

About functions and blocks

Few things are more fulfilling than to work with kids. This time we learned about functions and blocks, and how to extend the available instruction palette with custom behaviours.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Today we visited again our old friends from the 1st Jardim-Escola João de Deus de Coimbra, to teach some fundamental programming concepts using our Codey Robots – today’s class was dedicated to learning about conditional instructions!

As usual, lots of (good) energy.