ALARM Robotics hosts a Hackathon at the Franklin Public Library

39 kids in the age group of 3rd to 8th grade gathered together in the huge community room to program projects in Scratch on a rainy afternoon. The theme of the event was Halloween. Participants were grouped in teams of 3. 

Participants showed up with their laptops and settled down on the rug with their planning sheets. Teams designed video games, animations and interactive projects using Scratch 3.0, a block based programming language developed by MIT Media Labs. There were 8 middle school teams and 5 elementary school teams. Volunteer judges judged the projects after 3 hours of project time. 

ALARM Robotics hosts a Hackathon at the Franklin Public Library

There were projects with ghost jump-scares, games where you had to avoid skeletons, trick or treat candy games, Jack-o-lantern animations and many such creative projects. For many students this was their very first Hackathon experience. All hands went up when asked if they had fun and learned something new!

The ALARM Robotics team organized and hosted the event with help from the Franklin Public Library. 4H ALARM Robotics, is a community FRC team (FRC stands for FIRST Robotics Competition) from Franklin. ALARM Robotics is a non-profit robotics education club set up at the historic Brick School. ALARM Participation medals were given to all participants and Awards were given to 1st-2nd-3rd place teams in both elementary and middle school divisions.

Food was donated by the local Piezoni's and Dunkin Donuts (West Central St).

Ms. Felicia Oti, the Director of Franklin Public Library, addressed the young programmers and urged them to keep learning technology and programming and give back to the community by volunteering.

ALARM Robotics has been conducting community robotics events at the Franklin Public Library, they conducted the Robo-Racer Workshop in September, where participants challenged themselves to build racers without wheels. 

Up next they will be coaching 2 FIRST LEGO League Explore teams beginning Wednesday, Oct 25th. The session is 12 weeks and for kids in 2nd to 4th grade. 

Photos from the event can be found in one album ->   https://photos.app.goo.gl/EJr3gHwF5fqVyCG69