On Saturday, 11 March 2023, CERN hosted DevoXX4Kids – a day of workshops dedicated to programming, robotics and electronics. Around a hundred children aged between 4 and 15 took part in the event.
In the morning session, at the Globe of Science and Innovation, the Minis (aged 4–6) discovered the basics of screen-free programming, thanks to the Cubetto robot and the board game Robot Turtles. In the afternoon session, the Kids (aged 7–10) were introduced to coding using CodeCombat and made their own video games using the Kids-lab.io platform.
The Teens (aged 11–15) spent the day at IdeaSquare, where they learned about the electronics of the Internet of Things, robotics using the Poppy Ergo Jr, Thymio and Bitbot:XL robots, and HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
TheDevoXX4Kids initiative was launched in 2012 with the aim of providing, developing and bringing together tools and running workshops to familiarise children and teenagers with programming and IT systems in a fun way. Some 450 events have been held so far worldwide, reaching more than 8000 children. This was the third event to be held at CERN, the two previous ones having taken place in 2017 and 2020.
All the photos from the event can be found here.