So I just wrapped up turning my Python + CodeBot workshop into three full after-school events, and I’m honestly still riding the high from it. Figured I’d share what we did in case anyone else is juggling the same headache I had — a killer workshop idea and, like, six robots to share among 200 kids.
Family STEM Night was first. We gave families a disaster-relief scenario and had them program CodeBot to “deliver supplies” through an obstacle course. The trick was only running 1-2 live robot stations at a time — everyone else was doing unplugged stuff (debugging broken code, mapping routes on paper) so nobody was just standing around bored waiting their turn. Parents got way more into it than I expected, honestly.
Robotics Showcase came next, and this one felt like the payoff moment. Kids demoed their own projects — one team did warehouse automation, another built an accessibility assistant, someone did environmental monitoring — for parents and a few community folks who came through. One bot per table, and we let a couple of the strongest teams do a live “final challenge” on stage so everyone could watch without needing a robot per seat.
Career Exploration Night rounded it out. Got some local software devs, an engineer, a data scientist to run quick booths. Kids got a little “passport” stamped at each stop and wrote down questions ahead of time for a panel Q&A at the end. This one probably had the best long-term payoff even though it felt the least flashy in the moment.
Biggest lesson for me: don’t fight the CodeBot shortage, design around it. And since we’re an IB school, tying everything back to the Learner Profile / ATL language made it a much easier sell to admin than I expected.
If anyone wants the actual schedules/budgets, happy to send them over — took a while to nail down the timing on all three.