Inspiring the next generation of coders
I’m delighted to be running a week of free coding workshops for primary and secondary-age children in North Somerset this summer.
The week will kick off with an introduction to making interactive stories using ScratchJr. This is a perfect introduction to computational thinking for little ones. Check out some of the stories and games the children have made at after-school coding club.
Continue reading “Summer of Code ’15”In January, I introduced a course on making Apps with JavaScript at my local primary school. I chose Bitsbox, an interactive programming environment which allows children to create Apps that run on mobiles and tablets.
Bitsbox launched a Kickstarter campaign, which I was more than happy to back.
Bitsbox is aimed at primary school children, but can be used by anyone with some knowledge of JavaScript. Continue reading “Coding JavaScript Apps”
We had our last HTML lesson of the term this week.
I think the children are ready for a break; they were a little more hyper than usual, but still, we got down to work and the children got to finish their web pages.
Last week I started a course on HTML for Year 5 and Year 6 school children. The children were as enthusiastic as ever, so expectations were high. We had a tricky start learning about tags – especially remembering to close them! I used Mozilla Webmaker Tools for this, and although I think it worked well, this week I shall be adding colour to the mix with some CSS to make it a bit more exciting.
I met up with John Fones of Clevedon School last week and while discussing the coming up CAS SW (Bristol) Hub meeting, Blockly came up in the conversation. Blockly is a visual programming editor for educators, parents and children. The editor is like Scratch which allows to snap blocks together in a logical order. The project is still under development but there a some sample applications to play with. I had a go with at the maze, which I found great for teaching conditionals.