Albury PCYC runs coding and robotics school holiday camp for kids

The PCYC is hosting a three-day robotics and coding camp teaching kids about design engineering and programming.

Club manager Shane Walters said it was a unique opportunity for the youngsters to learn a range of new skills.

"There's no coding programs running locally at the moment," he said.

"Albury City used to have one at the library, but that stopped about a year ago and people have asked me about coding again, so I thought I could teach it and off we go."

IN OTHER NEWS:

Mr Walters said the children, aged between eight and 13, learnt technical and social skills.

"It's a mixture of maths and problem solving," he said.

"We're doing block coding with the kids, so it's a simple click and drag into the program itself.

"They need to work out how fast they need to go, and for how long, and what direction they need to turn the robots to go through mazes and that sort of stuff.

"We also do battles where they build their own chariots with balloons and pins and they've got to drive around and pop each other."

Participant Alex Petrovic said the best thing about the camp was the robot battles.

"I like battling and popping other peoples balloons," he said.

The nine-year-old said he wanted to learn more about robots.

"I already have one at home, but I could learn more things here, like how to drive it without crashing," he said.

Eight-year-old Joey Maloney said he was interested in coding because he wanted to be an engineer.

He imagined building his own robot one day.

"[It could] talk to you and it could put songs on and build things for you," he said.

Mr Walters said coding would be an important skill set in the workplace going forward.

"Coding is the next big thing really," he said.

"The phone has got a code in it, all the apps have got a code pretty much, look around, everything has code in it.

"So it is the way of the future with codes and it's just a fun thing to play with robots."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: