Intro to Coding Workshop

Date: Saturday, February 24th, 2023

Time: 10:00 am – 12:30 pm EST

Location: Room 211, Islamic Foundation of Toronto, 441 Nugget Ave, Scarborough, ON M1S 5E1

Workshop Topic: Dhikr Catcher – Code your own catch game in Scratch!

In this one-time class, students will create their own catch game to practice simple adhkaar inspired by authentic hadith while learning how to code in Scratch.

Students will be guided in building a game to help them practice saying simple adhkaar (SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah, AllahuAkbar) and learn their reward as described in authentic hadith. Source: Authentic Supplications of the Prophet (SAW) by Waleed K.S. Al-Essa (1996).

Students will be introduced to basic coding concepts in MIT’s Scratch platform (https://scratch.mit.edu/) – specifically for loops, conditional statements and variables. Students will be introduced to the iterative engineering design process. This process involves identifying the problem, brainstorming solutions, prototyping, testing solutions and critiquing them. Students will use logical thinking patterns to devise ideal solutions for their Scratch project, after considering a variety of factors.

Our role in this class will be to enable students to apply their creativity in a productive way – while also learning key skills in design thinking, such as brainstorming, prototyping and communicating design solutions. In addition, as engineers, we will take a small portion of the class to discuss potential career options in engineering – and where engineering design would be applied in these career options.

Instructors:

Afifa Saleem is a biomedical engineer, and STEM educator for over 9 years with University of Toronto, Project Include, Outschool, Scientists in School and more. She is currently building Deenward, a platform for Muslim families to share & enroll in extra-curricular classes conducted in a safe, Islamic environment.

Aseeb Syed is an engineer, currently working as a Learning Experience Designer for Paper Inc. He has previous experience as a STEM Instructor & Workshop Planner with STeK Workshops, and as a Teaching Assistant at McMaster University. 

Nashrah Syed is a student pursuing her BA in Educational studies and plans to pursue Teacher’s College. 

A charged laptop or chromebook, and charger are required. The device must be able to connect to wifi.

A mouse and notebook would be good to have.