Coding

Jun

2021

Virtual Mobility to Pachino

Lego robots

Each and every interaction between humans and computers is governed by code. Whether you create a web app, follow GPS directions when driving or wish to revolutionise social interactions. Coding is the literacy of today and it helps practice 21st century skills such as problem solving, team work and analytical thinking. In this virtual mobility Italian students prepared a couple of workshops about Lego EV3 robot and how to use its different sensors.

When this virtual mobility finished, students who participated in this activity presented to the rest of the students of the project what they learned. Each of the participants explained to the rest of the members of their group, in a practical way, the contents of each one of the workshops held during the mobility.

How to make a memorable pitch

Involved participants were provided with the necessary skills to improve their techniques and fluency to make an impressive presentation in English of their business ideas and their projects. That’s a crucial skill not only in their academic day to day at school, but also for their future. Nowadays, job interviews are increasingly more important than curriculum vitae. Candidates for a job have 3 or 4 minutes to convince the interviewer that they are the best option for that position. In other words, they must make a pitch selling themselves. Students who participate in this project will learn various techniques to make a memorable pitch and to communicate better. This way they will enhance their employability and may get better jobs

Oct

2020

CodeWeek 2020

This new academic year 2020-21 is quite strange. Some students or entire groups of students are confined at their homes. We are not allowed to travel abroad and many activities have to be held online. On mid October, a group of volunteers and supported by the European Commission organized the CodeWeek, a grassroots initiative which aims to bring coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way.

We participated in that initiative organizing an online event. Using the tools presented in our first mobility (Girona, November 2018), students had to create an app to make people aware of the dangers of COVID and the importance of pandemic prevention measures. Some groups created an app that included a quiz about prevention measures, others focused their efforts on what to do when you have COVID symptoms...

It was really a success. We were awarded with a recognition certificate.

Feb

2020

Finalists in the JA regional competition

Eco2meter

Eco2meter is a social and sustainable project that consists of creating devices connected to a mobile application to detect the level of CO2 emissions and other polluting gases. By doing so, we make people aware of the carbon footprint we produce and its harmful effects.

Eco2Spot is a small portable device to take it everywhere, with the application you can see: the amount of CO2 in the air, statistics and tips to reduce the carbon footprint, a real-time map with the CO2 level of the data collected from others ... This product is aimed at families, individuals and municipalities, to obtain information on air quality in user neighbourhoods of the municipality
With our project we want to help people to prevent diseases that affect human health (caused by the high level of gas emissions), in addition to the devastating effect it has on climate change.

Windgo

We have designed small individual wind turbines for houses, which will serve to have their own energy, reduce the high costs of renewable energy companies and, above all, help reduce the greenhouse effect caused by non-renewable energies.
Our wind turbine is manufactured with different materials, among others, carbon fiber, fiberglass, aluminum and metal. These materials are used to manufacture the rotor blades, the rotor, the hub cover, bearing reducer and cover. Various electrical components such as a multiplier, a generator, conductors of the generated energy, a control panel, as well as a cooling system are also required.

Jul

2019

Best innovative project

JA-YE Company of the Year competition

More than 200 young entrepreneurs, representing 40 student companies, gathered in Lille this week to compete in the Grand Finale of JA Europe’s Company of the Year Competition. Throughout the school year, the students went through the JA Company programme, an entrepreneurship education programme that bridges the gap between classrooms and workplaces. As such, teachers and business volunteers play a key role in the delivery of the programme. JA provides teachers with a series of learning-by-doing business, economics and entrepreneurship activities, while business volunteers visit the classrooms to share their experience and mentor students on career opportunities and the necessary skills required to match their ambitions.

Delta Innovative Award

After winning the national mini-company competition, the WaterSave components were being prepared during the month of June for the European final in Lille. They presented WaterLight, a device which helps save 50% of water consumption, and raise awareness about water consumption. They had to defend their project at three levels: in the presentation before an audience of some 400 people; at a stand they set up to show the jury what the project consisted of and in the Interview Panel with the jury. The fact of having carried out the project within the framework of the Erasmus + KA229 program was an added value that the jury took into account.

More info

May

2019

Mobility in Lisbon

Coding with Arduino

The main topic for this mobility was learning to code with Arduino. Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control both physically and digitally.

The Portuguese students presented the Arduino UNO board, as well as different sensors and explained how the programming platform works. The students made a small project with LEDs of different colours. After that, we held a second workshop on Arduino: students had to make a more complex project to build a traffic light in which the lights were turned on and off at varying intervals.

Awesome projects

On Wednesday, Portuguese students presented some robotic projects that they had developed the previous year. One of them was an Unusual Glove for People with Disabilities; a robotic glove that allowed to transform the body language made by hand into sounds to be able to communicate with the blind We found it a fascinating project and all the students could prove how this glove worked.

Another awesome project presented by the students was INETESAT III, a satellite where all the hardware is in a capsule similar to a can of soda. The Inetesat III captured images taken 1 km high on the Island of Santa Maria, Azores.

Autonomous car race

On Wednesday afternoon we had a race competition with the autonomous cars that each international students team had prepared in the morning. The competition consisted of a robot race (each robot had two engines and three wheels) in two circuits in which the robots had to avoid obstacles along the way to the finish line.

the first of them we learned to use the ultrasonic sensor to measure the length of the elbow and verify that the Vitruvian proportion was fulfilled ie 4 times the length of the elbow is equal to the height of a person. The results of the measurements coincided to a large extent with the proportions of Vitruvius, which caused a great surprise among the students

Nov

2018

Mobility in Girona

Unleash your creativity

One of the main topics of our first mobility in Girona was creativity and how to improve it. The first day, participants were welcomed and registered. After that, we had a workshop about how to use the Six thinking hats Edward de Bono's technique. We learned that this method helps you to a balanced assessment of your ideas, problems and challenges.

Therefore you may be wondreing how does it work? By asking you to wear six different thinking hats that represent the six different aspects of how you can possibly think. Once you've answered all the questions using the six hats, you'll know you've looked at your concept from every possibly viewpoint. With this method we investigate together the facts, the feelings, the pro's and cons, and the creative solutions we can come up with. De Bono calls this lateral thinking

Prototype to test your ideas

Before start creating a project, you must start from the beginning of the process and test your ideas to ensure they're the most effective way of accomplishing what you're working towards. Above all, prototyping helps you to test your ideas and receive a quick feedback from potential users. Moreover, it saves a lot of time a costs to implement improvements or changes. In this mobility we organized workshops about prototyping with different tools. Firstly, we started using POPApp software, by Marvel, to prototype an app that could solve a real need. Students had to thing about a business idea and create a prototype of an app.

The second workshop was about prototyping with a 3D printer. We learned how to use TinkerCad to design a prototype and how to use Cura software to have it printed in 3D. Students had some time to experiment with the 3D printers

All you need is code

Coding is a skill in high demand right now. It's very important for students' future to get involved in computer science. We want our students not just buy a new video-game, but to design it, not just download the latest app, but to design it.

The third workshop organized by Spanish students was about the MIT App Inventor. This tool lets you develop applications for Android phones using a web browser and either a connected phone or an on-screen phone emulator. In that platform you build apps by working with the App Inventor Designer, where you select the components for your app; and the App Inventor Blocks Editor, where you assemble program blocks that specify how the components should behave. You assemble programs visually, fitting pieces together like pieces of a puzzle.