Demo Talking Points

As you can see, the CPX has lots of sensors and lights to play with
In 2018, we found the younger kids were interested in the CPX the older kids worked with
We created two programs with the CPX in order to include the younger kids in the fun
MakeCode - block based coding
CircuitPython - Python based coding

MakeCode

Our curriculm is on our the website
which is open source and freely available for use
Click on Curriculum where we have all of our workshops
Go to the MakeCode workshops
appropriate grades for this workshop is 5-7
All of our sessions are here but for this demo we just need to go to the MakeCode Editor
Start a New Project
You can see:
- Device Simulator
- Forever Loop in the code editor
- Code Block Categories
I'm going to make the device turn on lights when I Shake it so I go to input and select Shake
Just an easy drag and drop
Make the lightsOn variable
easy right click options
now I need to set the lights to turn on and off
and add the lightsOn variable
I use colors other than red and green in case a student is color blind
Name and save
The code is downloaded as firmware to my host computer
Plug in the CPX
Shows up as a UBS drive and I'll drag and drop to load it
You don't have to download to device to test
Since we are using shake we can see shake is on the device simulator
If students prove to be more advanced they can look at the Javascript editor
Read through code and make changes, like how I'm going to adjust the color in Hexidecimal
Lets go back to see the Blocks color has changed to purple
Download the update to the device