Outreach events for the Next Generation Computational Modelling group in the University of Southampton. Using <a href="../projects/pythontool-mod.html" target="_blank">PythonTool-Mod</a>, we delivered two workshops in which young learners could get hands-on experience with Python programming inside Minecraft. The first event took place at the Winchester Science Centre in February 2017, the second was part of the University of Southampton Science and Engineering Festival in March 2017. A big thanks to all the participants and volunteers!

<span style="font-size: 0.65em; float: right">Image courtesy of the <a href="http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk/blog/2017-02-23/winchester-science-centre-minecraft-with-python.html" target="_ blank">NGCM blog</a>. </span> <br> <!-- http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~jrb1n15/science_and_engineering_day_2017/ --> Original contents were created to support these outreach events. From posters and leaflets, to learning materials. In particular, we presented the participants with several challenges, each involving a Python script which some variable parameters they could tweak. The results could be observed inside the game. To show an example, we usually started by a script which took a sentence and printed it with big *blocky* letters in Minecraft. The participants were then able to identify the piece of code containing the sentence and customise to their liking, as well as the colour. Another popular challenge involved shooting TNT blocks, where the players could change the power of gravity, and observe that the higher the gravity value, the quicker the TNT blocks were pulled down. The full set of materials can be found on <a href="https://github.com/alvaropp/PythonTool_outreach" target="_blank">GitHub</a>. <hr>