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.

The Mozilla Foundation is leading the way on digital fluency and creating the tools to aid the process of making, collaborating, and learning.

As I continue my own quest to help local schools in this area, I have found Mozilla Webmaker Tools a great starting point. I would love our children to be able to create and publish their own content ,and learn about open source and collaboration, which are all skills they will need as they grow up.

Everyone learns quicker by making, and at my workshop the teachers spent most of the time doing!

I created this Popcorn project of my trip to Mexico.