{"id":22879,"date":"2021-01-15T13:58:27","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/?p=22879"},"modified":"2023-03-07T17:42:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T01:42:50","slug":"featured-maker-dawson-the-new-coding-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/featured-maker-dawson-the-new-coding-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Featured Maker: Dawson the New Coding Star!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>With Tynker\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_Irgw72UxLc\">Holiday Code Jam winners<\/a> being announced today, we wanted to continue to introduce you to some of the winners of this year\u2019s Summer Code Jam! We\u2019re so impressed with the tens of thousands of submissions from throughout the summer and excited to talk to some of our winners about their awesome projects and experiences with Tynker!<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next up is Dawson, an eighth grader from Massachusetts! He\u2019s got a ton of hobbies, like tennis, hockey, soccer, and Pokemon. He\u2019s actually pretty new to coding, and winning the Code Jam is a pretty good start! Let\u2019s talk to him and hear his story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How did you get introduced to Tynker and how long have you been coding?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think I\u2019ve been coding for two years. My tech teacher introduced it to me in 5th or 6th grade.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? What are your favorite Tynker courses or tutorials? <\/strong>My teacher gave us the tutorials and courses. Sometimes he thought we could just do our own thing so we\u2019d make games or do the mob editor. I thought it was good that he\u2019d give us the lessons but I also liked going off my own and learning by myself too. I also like the things that help you out in Tynker!&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think they\u2019ve improved a lot! I haven&#8217;t learned Python yet but I think it\u2019s really helped me learn a lot of coding. I\u2019d go to the community and stuff and I\u2019d see these real cool games that people made and I\u2019d be like, \u201cI wish I could make that!\u201d but now I can! I can make some cooler stuff now, because I\u2019ve learned a lot.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What is your favorite project you\u2019ve made so far? What do you like about it? <\/strong>I like my emergency helicopter a lot! I did make this other helicopter that had a guy hanging down from it on a ladder.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Where did you get the idea for your project? How long did it take you to make?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a search helicopter with beams of light coming from it. I did see the other helicopters like military ones on Tynker that other people had made and I thought that was really interesting but I didn\u2019t want to copy them. So I worked really hard to make my own, putting other things like the beams of light that made it look really cool.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How do you get inspiration for your projects?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I kind of think of it in my head and sometimes I\u2019ll look in the community and I\u2019ll think of things other people have made and think of other ideas from that, like things to add. If they had rockets or something like that, maybe I\u2019d add something like that.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why do you like to code? <\/strong>I think it might help me later in life, my dad is an engineer. He\u2019s a manager for this engineering company. I think it\u2019s really fun to do.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What is your favorite way to use code? Do you have a favorite code block?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like all of it! I just do what I want to do at that time. I think the \u201cforever\u201d block is really cool because it does it forever and you don\u2019t have to worry about putting so many things in.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What do you do with a project when you\u2019re done with it? Do you debug it? Show it to someone? Publish it?<\/strong> I\u2019m always showing my family my projects because I&#8217;m really excited about every single one. For my search helicopter, I went back to it and added the ladder and guy on it. So, sometimes I\u2019ll go and edit them again.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What\u2019s the best thing about Tynker?<\/strong> I like a lot of Tynker. I really like the games you can do, like Crystal Clash and the other games. I really like the Mob Editor. That\u2019s probably one of my favorite things because you can\u2019t really find that anywhere else.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Is there anything we should change or add to Tynker?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the Mob editor, maybe you could add a skeleton? More mobs you could make, take from the community.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I mean the world is shifting over to electronics so that might really help for the future. My dad is an engineer so maybe I have those skills to be an engineer someday too!<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do you think other kids should try coding? Why\u2019s that?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Definitely, I think this is a really good learning experience for kids. Even older kids like teenagers, this could really help them learn to code.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They should use lessons first, look into the lessons like the dragon stuff, where you can move them with the code blocks. You get more and more advanced and you can move forward from that.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How did you come up with your Code Jam idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It might have been something in the back of my head because in Methuen they were having these free movie things and my mom told us that when we were driving. It must have been in the back of my head when we were driving because one of the movies that they were playing was Fire, the movie, the firefighter one, so that\u2019s all I could think of, for the emergency helicopter. Firefighters don\u2019t really have emergency helicopters, but the firefighter idea led to the emergency helicopter idea because I wanted it to be a flying vehicle.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Had you ever done a Tynker Code Jam before?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, I only heard of it a few weeks ago because my mom told me and I said, \u201cThat sounds interesting!\u201d so I went and did it but I\u2019d missed the first few already. But then I saw the Week 4 one, I thought it was \u201cMake your own flying vehicle\u201d and I got wicked excited so I hopped on and made one.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How long did it take you to complete the project?<\/strong><strong>\t<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Probably a few hours. I spent a lot of that day just fixing it, tweaking it, making it different, changing the colors. So it took a few hours.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Did you have any interesting challenges that you had to figure out \u2013 like how to move legs or add the right music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were a lot of challenges making it. I didn\u2019t know what to do for the back of it. I didn\u2019t really know what to do for the front of it, like the glass. I didn\u2019t know if I should make it one of the parts that points out from the helicopter or if I should just leave it flat so I decided to make one that was flat and one that had a bumper.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How did you feel when their parents told them that they won?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I went on to watch the Zoom call and I was so excited, I couldn\u2019t believe that I\u2019d win! I thought I might win because I put a lot of work into my project so I thought I had a good chance, but I didn\u2019t really know.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What do you want to do with your prize money?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not really, I think I\u2019m going to save it for something.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Do you like to code and will you keep learning more about coding?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I definitely want to learn more about coding. My dad did get me a Python book so I might keep reading that. It\u2019s really complicated to me, though. I don\u2019t know how to read it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also spoke with Dawson\u2019s dad Dustin to get his take on Dawson learning to code. \u201cI think it\u2019s pretty great! I\u2019m a software engineer myself. I started coding when I was pretty young, when I was in middle school. I won a computer, started to play with it, and just loved to program. It ended up becoming my career. When Dawson and his younger brother were born I was like, \u2018I\u2019d really love them to develop that love of coding I have, but if they don\u2019t, that\u2019s cool too! Maybe there\u2019ll be some day they get curious and we can build something fun.\u2019\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dustin notes that things have changed a lot since he was growing up, when Nintendo was about the extent of digital gaming. Kids\u2019 expectations of what a game should look like is much higher and that can be challenging. \u201cIt\u2019s just a lot higher of a bar, I think, just to start. So, I think it\u2019s great that the kids got introduced at school to Tynker. You know, they do these at school, they start doing it at home, and then they really just start finding their interest. They were both sitting side-by-side, working independently on projects together, so it\u2019s been really cool to see them develop a curiosity in it. And, you know, finding interest in the complex logic they need to build something interesting.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As an engineer himself, Dustin is always sure to support Dawson in coding. \u201cUsually, he\u2019ll show me something in Tynker, like in the 3D designer. He shows me the 3D view of these objects, he can manipulate them and zoom in, he\u2019s showing me, like a digital artist, how he designed this part of it and how he wants to animate it and what he wants to make it do, so it\u2019s more of a show-and-tell than helping him. He\u2019s independently going off and building things on his own.\u201d<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our thanks to Dawson and Dustin both for sitting down and talking to us. Happy coding!<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Tynker\u2019s Holiday Code Jam winners being announced today, we wanted to continue to introduce you to some of the winners of this year\u2019s Summer Code Jam! We\u2019re so impressed with the tens of thousands of submissions from throughout the summer and excited to talk to some of our winners about their awesome projects and experiences with Tynker! Next up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[510,12,54],"tags":[441],"class_list":["post-22879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-block-coding","category-ideas-and-tips","category-featured-makers","tag-featured-maker"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Featured Maker: Dawson the New Coding Star! - Tynker Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tynker.com\/blog\/featured-maker-dawson-the-new-coding-star\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Featured Maker: Dawson the New Coding Star! - Tynker Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With Tynker\u2019s Holiday Code Jam winners being announced today, we wanted to continue to introduce you to some of the winners of this year\u2019s Summer Code Jam! 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