I am a published author on
Amazon! Every year when I go on my snowbird adventures, I take 1 or 2 robots along and write up activities for kids. I used to incorporate those activities into my teacher training workshops, but this year I decided to take a new path and publish them in a coding, coloring, and story book called,
Send Your Robot to Work. The story follows the antics of Botley the robot and his friends (also robots) as they compete in the
Office Olympics. While it is a fairly quirky story, a lot of it is based on the goofy things I've seen in my 28 years as a technology consultant. The book includes 24 coloring pages and 13 coding exercises that allow kids as young as 5 years old to program Botley to do stunts like line following, maze navigation, talking, and obstacle avoidance.
This book turned out to be a sanity-saver for me during the recent pandemic. I'd originally intended to publish it as a digital e-reader, but with the enforced lockdown, I decided to illustrate the story and turn it into a coloring, as well as coding, book. I bought an iPad and taught myself how to use Procreate, which is SO much easier to draw with than regular pen and paper (especially when you can just tap the screen to erase a mistake). There are a lot more robots sitting on my desk. Maybe one of them has its own story waiting to be told.
