hello pike online 2021 education track
we are here
with renee noble for our very first talk
of the day get cooking with cookaberry
and i am
i'm gonna say this a lot of times today
but i'm really excited um not just
because i know renee and that this talk
is going to be fantastic
um but because it's it i'm i'm keen i
want to get more hardware i want you to
tell me why this is fantastic and i'm
sure you will um also it's just a really
cute graphic i don't know let's start um
so let me first introduce renee uh renee
is a software engineer tech educator and
community and team cultivator um having
spent the last six years growing the
girls programming network from a local
delight to a huge nation-spanning
operation which i happen to hold very
dear to my heart um
massive props renee uh renee founded her
own business connected code renee's aim
is to bring project-based tech education
and opportunities and materials to
schools and organizations and community
groups around australia through school
incursions clubs holiday programs
teacher pd sessions and more um renee do
you do personal interventions perhaps
just asking
renee is also thoroughly enjoying being
a cambridge computer science teacher at
presbyterian latest college
as well as consulting
as a speaker in the tech education
diversity and project management spaces
what i'm hearing is renee that you do
way too much you excel at it all and we
are ridiculously
happy to have you here for this
fantastic talk
excited to be here nikki i'm really
excited to tell you all about my journey
today on how i got cooking with
cookaberry my journey from
knowing very little about the kookaberry
to
you know discovering it then being like
maybe it's not all i thought it was
going to be and then ultimately being a
complete convert who talks about it all
the time to people i'm like yeah you got
to get on this cooker very
so here is how my journey went uh you
might remember me from previous years
but you'll notice that i'm yes not
wearing my
you know green outfit with my green
slides uh i'm of course still involved
with girls programming network but i
have started my own business as nicki
said connected code and wanting to
connect coding with context community
and curriculum i've loved you know i
love all the stuff i've been talking
about at pycon for the past few years
and the kids love it i've had so much
support from the community and
especially from the pycon education
community so i thought actually we need
to have this kind of stuff available
more of the time not just you know at
our quarterly gpn workshops but also you
know throughout the year and people all
over australia need to be able to access
and we really want to have this cool
project-based learning where you
understand how coding can impact your
life um and your family and your friends
accessible to everybody so i'm taking
what i've been doing and telling you
about for the past three years at pycon
and trying to deliver to everybody
through school incursions or code clubs
or community groups or teaching pd so
that's how i've started out on this
journey and it's actually the start of
my journey with the quicker berry as
well
so
i you know started out and i really
wanted to improve access to education
coding uh generally as well and you know
talking to other groups and people was
definitely part of the plan and a friend
of mine jim musserad you who's you know
very popular in the pike
python education space
from the micro python foundation came to
me and said hey i've got some mates at
at the austen foundation and they've got
this new thing called the cooker berry
and jim had mentioned a bit about the
quicker very to me before and what i
understood was it's a you know a micro
bit on steroids and i'm a fan of micro
bits i've been using them for a while
love to use them at gpn they feel like
make really cool projects so i went okay
i'd really love to get involved with
whatever i can help with with the cooker
berry and give it a go i love to try a
new piece of tech
so i said yeah i'd be happy to give them
a hand give them some opinions on how
this will actually you know roll out in
the classroom what you know might be the
clinchers what what can they offer what
kind of projects might be great i'd love
to
help out however i can so connect me up
so this is where i start out my journey
at ant anticipation bill i'm going to
call it um on my journey to full convert
um mountain of the cooker berry life
so
jim connects me up with julian at the
osgen foundation and
he sends me through my first cooker
berry kit so it's got a couple of cooker
berries uh some batteries and some of
these cute 3d printed stands as well as
some peripherals that are really great
to get you started things you might want
a speaker a buzzer potentiometer a light
sensor motion sensor temperature probe
these are just a few of the many many
peripherals that they have going i've
learnt now
so i wanted to get familiar with the
cooker berries so
here here's my you know
here's my explanation of this lovely
anatomy drawing that uh the stem
foundation is providing we've got our
led oled screen it's fantastic um big
screen as opposed to your 5x5 micro bit
display we've got three leds
down in just under the screen we've got
four of these push buttons twice as many
as the micro bit so i'm getting pretty
hyped at this point
uh and then we've on we flip it over and
we've got all of these ports so these
are where our peripherals plug in uh
which is super handy um so you can plug
straight into our speaker at this at the
time i got this there i
didn't have i don't have a uh micro bit
version two so i don't have any on-board
speakers so
this this was a pretty exciting and you
can plug in any sort of things with the
three or four pin uh adapters
and then under the hood we've got our
compass magnetometer and radio
the cooker berry also has its very own
software we've got cooker blockly here
on the left
so you can get your primary kids coding
and get them ready for python and on the
right we've got our cooker ide so we've
got coding and python and we've got this
fantastic serial on the left which i'll
tell you a little bit more about shortly
so
i went okay i gotta get started with
this so i started by looking at some of
the pre-installed apps so here on the
left i'm trying out the led and
this musical creation
let's just go back a little bit it has
skipped over my sound
so we've got our musical creation using
the accelerometer
and a plugged in speaker
yes one of the great things about the
cooker berry is that you can store a
bunch of files on it so you can go store
up your files you can give it to their
students to give them a try
and then you can also
um
you know take that out maybe going
outside so you have all this stuff
stored up and you didn't have to be
connected to a computer to load to flash
your programs onto it
i also then went and coded a few of my
own things hello world a classic
uh some use of the potentiometer the
buttons you've got to get amongst the
buttons and the leds
and also we have the what i call hello
cereal coming up which is
you can just print straight to the
cereal and it's just there you don't
have to open any extra menus or anything
to find it super good for debugging as
well as the screen being super good for
debugging because you have you know that
way to actually see what's in your
variables rather than you know having to
you know
do some sort of ad hoc weird debugging
to work out why on earth is mike you
know micro bit maybe not having a pro
having this problem and or watching
those errors scroll across the tiny five
by five display so this is looking
pretty good at this point
so my first thoughts on
the quicker berry were the lcd is like
that screen it's great i love it it's
just makes you able to communicate so
much more stuff than you could with the
micro bit four buttons i love it amazing
i never have enough buttons on the micro
bit so that's fantastic
the speaker it just plugs in terrific
that's what i've been wanting all this
time
it's super fun to do those alligator
clip connections to your headphones but
it's using up one of your ports uh you
know on your micro bit and you sometimes
end up with alligator clip mayhem if
you're trying to do several bits
connected to your uh connection point at
the bottom
got these pre-coded apps which are great
if you want to give kids a go at like
inputs and outputs on your cooker berry
also great for your non-stem non-tech
stem activities so if you want to get
kids doing some data science maybe
you're in maths class you want to do
some different you know
graphing and calculations you can use
the kookaburra for a bunch of different
things not just coding and the ozdem
foundation is providing a bunch of
different apps to use the things even if
you not a coder yourself or a great
starting point for seeing where you
might want to go with your creations
saving the multiple apps also great you
can have your pre-coded apps you could
provide apps to your students or you
could get students to create a bunch of
apps and maybe head out into the bush
and take a few measurements of different
things for ph or humidity etc so that's
all fantastic and i'm loving that but
there is no allocator clip connection
pads which was like i shouldn't be this
disappointed about this but i am and the
reason is because
like i thought that kookaburra is a
better micro bit so i should be able to
make all my micro
bit projects but better surely
but
how would i bop
bop it is a classic gpn activity where
we connect up our pads at the bottom to
our micro bit and i was like but i
really want to make bop it and all the
other kind of creative activities we
have that rely on making weird things
out of foil and cardboard and blue tack
and connecting them up that that i've
been like constrained my thinking to
that for a while
so i went well despite all the great
features i'm not completely sold
because i was at a loss for what to
build because of those constraints that
it had on my mind all that time i hadn't
really delved out of there and i was
like well what if i was more stuck on
all the things i couldn't make than the
things that i could make
so here i hit my conflicting for
thoughts cliffs i hadn't made my cooker
berries obsolete my micro bits obsolete
with the cooker berry so i'd still want
to have both so i was like oh we've had
to choose what would i do well some of
my projects depend on these pads but you
know i see there's so many benefits of
the cooker berry
so the old stem team then asked me to
come up with some ideas that they might
be able to make with the cookie berries
they wanted to get out and do some
outreach
in some regional areas and i thought
okay this is really in line with
what i want to do in terms of making
context related coding projects so i'm
going to give this a go and give it a
play
and i started
thinking of the kookaburra from a new
perspective because you could really
make these learning journeys from
research to making something calibrating
it and then collecting data and then
displaying that data and communicating
and it's like okay this is really on
brand with what i want to do it's about
getting it out there and making it
relevant to each different group of
people so okay this is pretty cool you
know it's no it's like bop it but i i i
think this has actually got something
it's real life stuff
so that's something i really want to be
involved with
and i kept thinking he's like okay what
else could i be making and i often went
back to like what i'd seen on the micro
bit and what i could do with the micro
bit uh i was kind of caught between
these mindsets of going with what i know
and exploring all these new
possibilities that were a bit unfamiliar
and i didn't really know which way to go
with them so it's easy to get drawn back
into what you're familiar with
but as i asked about more peripherals
and tried them out they spawned more and
more and more ideas and i was realizing
that the ease of creating highly
practical tools with the cooker berry
was that's the key
so
then
i was like if i wanted to make something
that was this real with them with a
micro bit like you could possibly do it
with the breakout boards but you know
there's not that many ports on them so
you might be going down like to br
breadboard city and you don't
necessarily want to be doing that uh if
that's not really what you're trying to
cover in your curriculum it does take
time and there are a lot of you know
things that can go awry if we're doing
that
so yeah this was a great way to get
making real projects
no wiring problems drivers included it
all just fits and worked i could be used
in all different kinds of context to
make real solutions so i was thinking
about
health and sports with peripherals for
heart rate monitors you could use the
accelerate accelerometer to make a step
counter
there's so many different uh
environmental centers for moisture
temperature humidity and many more and
you can just start solving problems
around your own house maybe you need a
light sensor to tell you that your
plants aren't getting enough light or
you need motion to detectors to see if
your dog's getting out
there's a lot of things that you could
do
i really started to change my tune when
a friend asked me to come along to the
conservatory of music at the university
of sydney to show
some music teachers to soon to be music
teachers in their teaching cohort
how to integrate technology into music
learning in their classroom
music technology wasn't something i'd
spent a lot of time on before i hadn't
heard much about with micro bits i had
to get to thinking about what you could
possibly do
i was quick to come up with a few ideas
that would be quick to code in quicker
blockly because i wasn't going to chuck
our tech newbie music teachers in the
deep end with teaching them python in an
hour and i certainly wasn't going to get
out the breadboards in that hour to try
and get them making something so i gave
them some things that they could make in
cooker blockly just by plugging in these
peripherals
so i had a few different ideas some easy
ones without you know plugging much in
at all metronomes bpm counters which are
great um but also some ways to make some
musical instruments so we had this uh
pitch bend
and we also have this i'm going to call
it my moisture theramin using a moisture
sensor to create music and some of the
students even with a little bit of
programming experience were able to
create their own instruments
like this that accelerometer based
musical instrument there
but my real pistol resistance was
this my play-doh xylophone
everybody really got on board with this
one
so for my squishy circuit days
i knew that play-doh was a good
conductor but also it would make a
variable resistance it's not that
conductive and the cooker very really
got me thinking about circuits and
voltage rather than just creating
buttons like with the boppit where it's
an open or closed circuit it's really
a lot of these measurements a lot of the
devices the potentiometer and the all
the probes really give you
information in terms of voltage so it
was really good to change my thinking
about what we could be teaching kids and
actually giving them more of an
education on how the technology was
working and how data is transmitted and
communicated and how circuits work
really
so i used some of the components
probably in an unintended way to allow
me to hook up my plato but it was a big
hit amongst the students and also the
guys at the oldstem foundation
so at this point i'm going the cookberry
is not a micro bit there's no ideas to
be discovered i just have to play around
a little bit so i found myself here in
my slow epiphany valley um figuring out
what i might be able to do and seeing
this technology from another new
perspective for what it really is
so
having learned all this i went okay i
need to get this in the classroom to see
actually how it plays out and as nikki
mentioned i'm lucky enough to be working
at plc sydney as a cambridge computer
science teacher for the year 9 class and
i went okay we've got to teach inputs
outputs coding and algorithms for this
curriculum the cooker berry seems great
it already started on python earlier the
in the year with a tic-tac-toe game
so i was like let's let's give the
kookaburras a go and i got the girls to
make a whistling countdown timer so we
started off with some basics about
timing and embedded systems
and worked our way up to more accurate
timers and then adding some fun sound
effects so we ended up getting this
project
[Music]
the girls picked it up super fast it was
amazing to see they have no embedded
experience before and they loved the
finished product and really understood
how it worked and they especially loved
all playing their countdown timers at
the same time to get a very loud
whistling noise
so given how fast the girls had picked
it up i went this would be a great
opportunity to
do some creative coding activities with
the cooker berry so for their first
assignment i challenged them to make
an app for the cooker berry that helps
with learning a specific area
and i won't spoil it now the my four
girls who did this project are actually
in the student showcase this afternoon
with some awesome projects so you should
go along and watch that for sure
but i can say that they've made some
very creative things using
different ways the cooker berries can
work with different components to make
unique and actually useful projects that
actually solve real problems that they
had when they were learning
so
having seen it in the classroom i was
like you know what this cooker varies
more than just a toy i'm not really
about toyified tech is what i call it
these you know the spheros and lego
robotics they all have their place in
the classroom for getting
kids excited about technology and giving
them at you know a place to start with
something tangible that they can
interact with but they also all have
their limitations of what they can do
and how real they can feel because you
know they are just you know a ball that
rolls around or things like that you
can't necessarily use it in your
everyday life
but the cooker berry apps really seemed
like a great prototype for something
that is a real thing you've got real
interactions with the ui from the screen
and you can plug in all sorts of
peripherals that you you know would find
as components of a real embedded system
if you were that you might buy from the
shop so it seems like a really good real
prototype for students to be making in
the classroom with only a couple of
weeks of embedded systems experience and
less than seven months of python
experience so next to this the micro bit
was actually kind of starting to look
like a toy to me it was really great for
making games like bop it or
uh you know toy programs and maybe even
toy little projects that you could use
around the house but with without you
know all these ports in the back you're
going to need at the very least a
breakout board or you might even need to
get the breadboards out to make
something that starts to feel real so i
was really warming up to these cooker
berries at this point
so
at this point my take on the cookie
berries was they're really easy to get
started with you can play with these
pre-installed apps which are really
useful for seeing how they work and
seeing how you plug things in without
having to get coding first you didn't
need any embedded experience to start
coding and debugging was way easier than
i'd found with the micro bits where you
end up with that forever scrolling error
message across that 5x5 display just
being able to print something out or
seeing in this in the serial what the
error was um or printing out your
variables to the screen was really easy
for the girls to comprehend and not make
it seem scary and not seem like their
project was broken
there's all the same things we'd learnt
with python before
that they could use
in this to do their debugging
it was great to see how real the
projects felt to them and we didn't even
need much peripherals to get that
happening you could use none you could
just you know be pressing buttons and
using the screen or you could be
plugging in a speaker maybe a light and
that's it and it really is plug and play
you can just get started with plugging
something in
and it was really ready to grow with
you can make real solutions to problems
you've seen that people know how to
interact with you don't need to be like
well in the micro bit you when you see
the star then you need to shake it or
you need to press the a button you don't
need to have those you can just explain
it on the screen you can combine all
your peripherals in different creative
ways you have so many options and you
can even combine your favorite
non-cooker berry components like this
fun rainbow light uh you can use
peripherals for adding you know
connecting clips to whatever items you
have and you can even connect up your
little bits kits which i was excited to
hear about and if you do run out of
ports in the back i've just learned
about these breakout boards which are
really fantastic they have so many ports
so i'm excited to try some bigger
projects with them
so at this point i was like the
kookaburra offers low barriers to
meaningful real projects that's that's
it and high capacity for creative real
world applications so people can get
started and then just keep on going
so here i am full convert and i keep
telling people about it i've arrived at
the destination or is it just the
beginning because i certainly have some
more plans for the cooker berries
so from my musical endeavors at the
conservatory of music i've decided to
make a full course both in blockly and
in python for creating fun musical
instruments taking kids from everything
from just pressing one of the onboard
buttons to make a sound
to making full-on musical instruments
like these paper pianos and toilet paper
roll clarinets
[Music]
i also have some
exciting incursions planned for next
year
using the cooker berries using them to
build escape rooms using various
peripherals to make different puzzles
for other teams to solve and using them
for scavenger hunts and detective
mysteries actually collecting data
graphing data to see
what you know who the cookie thief might
have been or to find clues to get you to
the next location
and finally
i'm still bopping with some with some
learning i figured out how i could keep
my bopping life still happening
after you know my endeavors with the
uh plato xylophone and the plato
xylophone even uh showed the cuckerberry
team that the kind of things that i want
to be making with these in the classroom
and they in fact made me this new
uh
new component here so i don't have to
keep uh shoving sewing needles and
resistors in to pull up or pull down my
uh three pin connector so yeah the
cooker fairy team is very open to
feedback from teachers and what they
want and what they need to get making
projects that they love in the classroom
and there's so many peripherals out
there that you can get using
uh so and of course i'm gonna keep on
cooking i'm loving working with the old
stem foundation giving them feedback on
how things go in the classroom whether
it's their software their materials and
helping them with their documentation
and features for the cooker varies just
like on that last slide
if you want to get in touch with the
austen foundation do get on their
website they are getting there they will
be more mainstream with the cooker
berries shortly but you can just get in
contact with them via email if you are
very excited about the cooker berries
right now
thank you so much for listening today i
hope to get some awesome questions from
you feel free to get in contact with me
or my quicker very obsessed cats uh
anytime
i should unmute my microphone
fantastic thank you so much renee that
was
great uh we have a bunch of questions um
that are hiding here over on my other
monitor as i look awkwardly to my right
um
okay so
um the the most upvoted question um is i
think the question that we spoke about
even before the start of this talk um uh
these look great where can i buy some uh
it it seems like they might be only
available directly to schools at the
moment
yes i think that at the moment that is
the case uh and julian is working
directly with schools to get out a bunch
of kids there's only about 500 of these
out in the world so far
at a variety of schools and institutions
so if you're keen get in contact i'm
sure they're always looking for people
to you know test them out and they will
be going mainstream soon i hear they're
getting a new website that will tell you
all about the features and more
pre-made apps and more components soon
excellent um i'm excited because i yeah
that i think that really resonated with
a lot of the audience and there's
definitely um a sense that we all need
more microcontrollers
in addition to the ones that we just
generally having lying have lying around
on our desks already
um
uh now i had a self-injured question
interested question um
do we have more examples of what
students have made with the cooker
berries and i think we're going to hear
more of that this afternoon yeah seven
we've got seven projects from my girls
coming up this afternoon they're very
very fun
um uh
fantastic
um
uh
what is the networking like uh was a
question um one of the things that this
person adores about the microbits is how
easy uh writing networking code is do
you have any experience with that i've
done only a little bit of the radio
things in cooker blockly at the moment
you can't set different channels but
they are working on that so you are able
to have more than the one channel in
your classroom but so far super easy if
you you know for the me alone in my
house with two cooker berries very easy
to you know set you know set it up send
a message receive it too easy
excellent um yeah that
that is
so much fun to do in a classroom so that
that's good to hear
um uh
another question for what's the
documentation like for cooker berries uh
is there a bank of learning resources or
tutorials for teachers
that's actually what i'm working with
the old stem foundation to make sure
there are good resources so that's kind
of why they're not fully rolled out yet
they're just in trial phases but they
are working with me and with other
people to make sure it's going to be
awesome getting started guides awesome
project
guides and awesome slides to use in your
classroom and mini projects to do along
the way
fantastic
that will make it
yeah that'll be really valuable um i've
got running out of time and a few more
questions are they similar in price to
the micro bit any idea on that
so
at the moment i know they're not like as
mass produced as the micro bit they're
all aussie made which is really great
the micro bits about 25 20 to 30 of
these i know the only thing i know is
you get the cooker berry you get a
battery and you get a little stand
um for seventy dollars so that's
including the battery so i'm not sure
about battery list and as well as the
cables so
i'm not sure and the exact differential
but the batteries are really useful as
well so
batteries are pretty cool uh possibly a
related question will it be available
outside of australia
i have to assume so but i'm not a
hundred percent sure but i can't see why
not the goal is to put a quicker berry
in the hands of every year five child so
that might be their first point of call
but i'm sure they wouldn't you know that
they want to help people learn and they
do do a bunch of work with the uk so i
have to assume so yes
um we are at time but there are two more
questions so i'm gonna be mean and just
keep going haha uh any chance the
hardware designs might be released as
open source hardware i'm not sure that's
that's definitely not my domain i'm not
from the old stem foundation i'm not
from the cooker berry team i just i'm a
really big fan of these cooker berries
um and i'm doing a little work to help
them out uh because i love to make sure
there's great resources so ask them that
and there's one more
and there's one more question but i'm
gonna save it for the hallway track
after the question is does the toilet
paper clarinet actually have a breath
sensor or is it just a fun shape we can
talk about toilet paper and clarinet in
the hallway track so would you please
all join us there right now and then
come back uh for our next speaker um
because it's going to be a great one um
shrey is going to talk about python type
hints and how they can supercharge cs
education and i will see you there
thank you so much renee that was
fantastic thank you for having me i'll
pop into the hallway track in a few
minutes once i click over to there
thanks everybody