I was just listening to a Guardian Tech Weekly podcast where the discussion moved on to coding for children. With a new ICT school curriculum, teachers have a big task in their hands. There are many open source resources available that can help to support the new school curriculum, but the choice can be overwhelming for teachers.

I asked my daughter, who is in year 8, how she was finding her ICT lessons. “Boring”, was her response.

It doesn’t have to be this way. How do you engage children and spark their imagination to the point where they can open their computers and not simply ‘consume’, but tinker and make their own games?

The key is ‘fun’. It’s got to be fun. It needs to draw in children by building on the things they already love doing. By playing with the technology, they will learn to make things, to break them, to fix them… and to share them. The children aren’t afraid to try, and we should give them the tools and step out of the way, offering a guiding hand when asked.

Most of the ICT rooms [sic] I have been in, are old fashioned and dull. They need to be open spaces where the children can feel inspired and creative – and able to move around, ask questions, share their creations, help each other, but above all, have fun.