Mario:bit - Mozilla Festival 2019 Session

This session is facilitated by Andrea Rodrigues, Farah Ait Oumeziane, Stanley Riodan-Sayers, Indigo Ahven

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About this session

Participants will be asked to code a self-driving Micro:bit Cart to carry objects to the finishing line. participants will work in groups to program, test and race their Mario:bit Cart.

Each group will be supported with worksheets and a facilitator for additional help.

They will then take part in a discuss to decide whether the best way to win is by reaching the finishing line the fastest or getting all objects across safely. After each group finishes coding and testing the carts, they will then have a race to see who wins.

This session will cater to all needs, whether the participants has never used micro:bits before or would prefer to write code instead of using blocks to create the algorithms. Different worksheets will be available, including: beginner guide to Micro:bits, coding using blocks, and using python to code the self-driving Mario:bit Cart.

Goals of this session

The theme this year, for Mozilla Festival 2019 is “More Responsible Artificial Intelligence”. This year, students from Ada. National College for Digital Skills are looking at how decision making algorithms can be used to program autonomous vehicles. To explore this, our session in the youth zone will simplify the concept of self driving cars by using Micro:bits to program your very own Mario:bit Cart.

The goal of the session is to make individuals decide whether the best way to win the race is by getting the “Cart” to the finishing line the fastest or getting all objects to the finishing line safely. By the end of the session they will have the chance to think about how ethics and responsibilities are related to self driving cars.