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“Yes!” Alisa, a Grade 10 student, jumped up and did a little dance. It had not been easy to get all those jumper cables wired up correctly, but the LED display connected to her Raspberry Pi computer board had finally lit up and now she could start working on the software part of her project.

This year, Grade 10 coding class is all about hands-on exploring of how computer hardware and software really work together and interact at a deep level. Students set up and configure their own Linux operating systems on a Raspberry Pi computer, they use its input/output interface to control LEDs and add buttons to control their setup. Further basic challenges involve setting up several types of displays and creating software for these with JAVA and Python coding languages.

Technology teacher, Mr. Engelen said, “Coding classes in Grades 7, 8 and 9 have prepared the students in Grade 10 for this interactive course. The goal is to prepare them for the AP Computer Science A course in Grade 11. The benefits of using robotics, Raspberry Pi computers, and electronics such as LEDs give students a deeper understanding of hardware and software.”

At the moment, more complicated projects are underway, some extending the Raspberry Pi’s with Arduinos, a programmable circuit board. Seyheing ’21 is making a weather station using an add-on sensor array mounted to the Raspberry Pi, called a SenseHat board. A SenseHat board has inbuilt primary sensors to measure temperature, humidity and pressure and the ability to output data to software.

Rachna ’21, Sothea ’21 and Phirom ’21 are working on a face recognition system using a Raspberry Pi and its camera. Their project proposal states: ‘We will have a Raspberry Pi attached to a camera module. The camera detects faces and can match them with the names of people that are in our database. We can add a motor and a locking mechanism that will only unlock doors for the faces that it recognizes. There are many other projects, like an FM broadcast experiment by Keopagnapech ’21 and Srey On ’21.

Strange noises continually emanate from the far end of the classroom. This is where the World Robotics Olympiad mat is situated. Students are building and programming Lego Mindstorms robots to complete missions set for the next World Robotics Olympiad. They need to play sounds, sense colors, lift and maneuver items and have the robot make the correct decisions depending on the layout of the mat.

Students work on their own projects but share techniques and ideas, frequently coming together to evaluate each other’s progress. Each week they keep a journal of their work, questions and thoughts about what they have done or seen.

Rachna ’20 recently wrote in his reflective journal, “We got together with other groups and observed their accomplishments. We saw the many different types of displays used and how they were coded. The use of line segments was exciting. It was how it was coded that I found most interesting. The Python code used hexadecimal numbers to address the different parts of the display. It is similar to code I have seen previously. Many strings of these codes were put together to manually display a simple letter like “A” on the display. Because of this, I’ve been trying to make similar custom fonts on my own LCD display.”

Kimheat ’20 said, “Coding class is so rewarding. We are challenged to work on our own ideas and to take them from the virtual world into the physical world. It is so exciting.”

Keep up the good work Grade 10 and good luck with computer science next year.