kissinuk Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 Hi, A couple of people on here have asked me about this recently, basically Code Club is a volunteer based scheme in the UK to try to give every kid in the UK the chance to learn how to 'code'. Back when I was a kid this was easily done by turning on your Spectrum/Commodore etc, children nowadays don't have that luxury with their iPads & PS3's! The lessons are run by IT professionals giving up their time and running clubs in schools either as an after school club or during the school day (they must undergo CRB checks first). I run two clubs in schools local to me and they have proven to be really popular, I run them one day a fortnight thanks to my very flexible employer (I run an IT team who develop/test code as a career!). It's aimed at 9-11 year olds (years 5 & 6) and lessons are kept fun by giving children a game to write, once they've completed it they can play the game and usually end up making their own modifications. This is the really fun part as they think they are messing about by changing graphics/making things move at different speeds/experimenting but unknown to them this is the best way to learn to code! Admittedly this sometimes raises eyebrows such as a pupil last week asking me if his "evil Santa should chop presents in half instead of elves", erm, yes please! For the first couple of terms we use a product called Scratch which allows you to drag & drop jigsaw type pieces of code, sounds simple but in actual fact these are very close to real world coding - you learn how to write IF statements, LOOPS, VARIABLES and more. The games look like this:- The 'code' is all colour coded with sound, movement, variables etc all separate colours to make the lessons even easier to follow. Later lessons get harder and term 3 introduces HTML. If you are interested you should check the main website at http://www.codeclub.org.uk, on here is a map where you can check if your school has a club - the map will also show schools currently looking for a volunteer. If they are not on the map them speak to the ICT coordinator to see if they will help look for a volunteer. If you want to try this at home first you can download Scratch from their website, note a V2 has just been released but the Code Club lessons are currently designed for V1.4, this older version can be downloaded here: http://scratch.mit.edu/scratch_1.4/ It's 100% free and 100% safe to download! Next, download a sample lesson from the link below, this is 'Whack-A-Witch' our Halloween lesson: http://codeclub-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/public/codeclub-whackawitch.pdf There is also a Christmas lesson that I wrote for Code Club, PM me if you want more info. Finally, here's a pic from the local paper of one of my clubs! I'm pleased to say they are as popular with girls as they are boys, this is really important as IT development is still male dominated and that needs to change. If you want more info just let me know. Paul. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Couperwife Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 We use scratch at school, for year 7s and 8s. They get a lot out of it and enjoy it. I would love to see what you do with your groups. Cathy X Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soapdragon Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Learning whilst having fun! The VERY BEST kind of learning! Looks very exciting - we will be exploring this at the weekend (when there is space and time - hopefully!) Thanks so much for the heads up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patricia W Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 And if anyone has any advice as to how to set something like this up for the older ones (to 15/16) I'd love to hear about it. The area in which Soapdragon and I live is the UK Science Zone and is awash with high tech including retired IT/scientists with spare time. I know several who would be keen to volunteer. In fact, I'm amazed that our nearest ones are about 25 miles away. One other question, do the Code Clubs make use of Raspberry Pi? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kissinuk Posted October 8, 2013 Author Share Posted October 8, 2013 (edited) One other question, do the Code Clubs make use of Raspberry Pi? Currently no, but there's no reason why they can't as Pi's come pre-installed with Scratch. Some of the 1 day events that have been run by Code Club have used them, I believe they created some kind of piano with a Pi, Scratch and some real bananas(!). Google have donated 3 Pi's to each club to give to the pupils who need them most. All of my pupils have computers at home so as part of the next lesson we will be judging some animated monsters that they are coding and giving them away to the 3 best entries. As for 15-16 year olds I'm not aware of any equivalent thing but can find out. There are plenty of free tools available that would introduce them to 'real' programming (such as Visual Studio Express & Microsoft XNA), but not aware of any lessons. Edited October 8, 2013 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patricia W Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Thanks! Maybe we'll have to be the ground-breakers in setting something up for the older age group if nothing is available to link into. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
