I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to run a series of three morning Scratch coding sessions at Yatton Junior School.

We – I’m doing this with my neighbour and friend @gracesauto – have the blessing of the Head Teacher, and the commitment of Year 6 teachers and the enthusiasm of the children. Continue reading “Scratch that programming itch in school”

Yesterday I led a workshop for primary school teachers in North Somerset on some of the Open Source tools now available to enable children to make stuff for the web. I covered Scratch, Python and RaspberryPi, but I also wanted to introduce Mozilla Webmaker tools – Thimble, Popcorn and X-Ray Googles.

As I had used Mozilla Webmaker with children before, I thought the teachers would also be keen to have a play. I was right, and we could have filled the room three times over! In my experience, Thimble is by far the best tool to use when learning to create your first web page, and I could sense the satisfaction in the room as the teachers shared their creations. Continue reading “Creative Coding for Children”