This conference hosted in Limerick IT, the Thurles Campus, was a first for me. I was in this campus a few years back, where I attended the Games Fleadh. This really fostered my fondness for RoboCode. Something that began when I was in Maynooth as an undergraduate student. It is great to see the LIT Thurles campus really getting so involved in Computer Science, and is a credit to the team there. The keynote Stephen Reid was excellent, and his vision for Gaming in Education was interesting. I suppose I always worry about the overuse of IT in any classroom, so I listened with open ears! Stephen gave a good argument and his talk was excellent, he is a natural presenter. I really enjoyed the main hall for the talk, it's a great asset for the college and for the conference.
The next talk I attended was that of Stephen Howell. I have attended a few of Stephens talks in the past and he is definitely a speaker that I would recommend you see at least once. This time Stephen was discussing and demonstrating the Micro:bit. I heard of this before and am a serious advocate for the Arduino, so this was right up my ally. Stephen gave a very enthusiastic presentation as always, and showed that the Micro:bit is a stepping stone to the Arduino. Its web based app is excellent. My only criticism for using it, say at a coderdojo is the download steps to the get the code onto the device. To me its fine but I can imagine some people struggling with the steps. That said the code interface is similar to Scratch, and the control of the sensors is also very intuitive. This makes the coding experience very simple yet effective. I intend to use it with primary schools in the future.
My talk on Scratch alongside c#, seemed to go down well. It's always a good sign when you get emails days after with further questions! All in all an excellent conference, one which I intend to attend next year.
A copy of my paper can be found at: keithquille.com/publications