Useful links:

I’ve been glad to help out recently at a couple of events aimed at getting youngsters coding. The recently-instituted Turing House Dojo took place a couple of weekends ago at the recently-instituted secondary school of the same name in Teddington. And the 2nd Wimbledon Raspberry Jam took place yesterday in Wimbledon Library, courtesy of Albert Hickey and Cat Lamin, supported by Wimbletech.

(The Wimbledon one was a bit odd for me as I was born less than half a mile away and went to school to Wimbledon College. I used to go and work in the reference library after school when I was in the VIth form — and the reference library is now a big open space where we had show-and-tell events running yesterday. The workshop I was giving was in the former children’s library).

Each of the two events had a good showing of youngsters and parents. If I had to guess, the modal age was probably 10 or 11 for both events although with a fair spread younger and older. At the Teddington event, all bar one of the attendees in my group had a parent by their side; at Wimbledon, about half. (I don’t think it was required for Teddington that the parent participate as such, although they do have to be present on site; I think it just worked out that way).

The Teddington Dojo was basically a couple of hours of youngsters in different groups (Basic Python; Intermediate Python; Scratch; Arduino) going through mini-projects or worksheets. The Wimbledon Jam was a more varied affair: 1.30pm to 4pm with half-hour talks in one room, 45-minute workshops in another room, and a large central space with show-and-tell projects including robots, robot football, Flotilla, green-screen and others, all using Raspberry Pi in various ways.

At Wimbledon I helped out in a talk by Nic Hughes (”I’m a parent; get me out of here!”) and then floated for a bit until my own workshop was due. I had decided to use the Breakout clone (renamed “Wall Ball”) which I’ve written about before as the basis for the Intermediate Python activity. I wasn’t banking on too much Intermediate-ness; I was only going to assume that those attending had at least used Python. And even that wasn’t always the case…

I used the same worksheets at the two events, but I learnt a few lessons from the earlier Teddington event. So in the intervening week I tweaked the worksheets for the most urgent elements. As an aide-memoire for myself and in case anyone’s interested in the particular challenges, these are some of the things I picked up and — in some cases — addressed:

In both events, the parents and youngsters taking part were enthusastic and receptive. Some more than others, naturally. The 2-hour format of the Teddington Dojo meant that younger kids were flagging towards the end. The Wimbledon Jam had only 45 minutes plus a little overrun and all but the youngest got through to step 2 (moving the bat). Several finished the worksheet altogether and had moved on to the extension sections at the end, which was the idea.

I still have work to do with the worksheet format, but after two events, I’m fairly happy that it’s mostly workable and I hope to take it to other Jams / Dojos and make it available via readthedocs for other people to use.