Title: Code Club

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 08 July 2015 21:46:34 +01:00 or Wed, 08 July 2015 21:46:34 +01:00

Summary: Steve Folly shares his experiences with volunteering and teaching children coding.

Body: 

There has recently been a proliferation of organisations set up to get children and young people interested in ‘coding’. And not just in the UK – throughout the world as well, including Coder Dojo [1], Hour of Code [2], and many others.

There are most likely good reasons for this. In the UK, the number of students taking computer science subject in universities fell by about 29% between 2003 and 2012 [3]. This is not surprising when you understand that teaching IT in schools used to be all about learning how to use applications like Word and Excel; not how to write software.

I’m happy in my job as a software developer, I’m getting paid, why should these figures concern me? Well, I am concerned and I do care. Who’s going to be there in the future to continue our good work?

Over the past few years I found I’ve been helping and mentoring colleagues, and I always had this feeling that I wanted to do more. I have in the past volunteered with a local community centre; giving my time to help with IT related topics. It was very fulfilling and I was really pleased that I could help others with my knowledge.

If any readers were at the ACCU Conference in 2014 they will remember Bill Liao’s keynote talk about Coder Dojo [1]. I was there and it really hit home with me: inspiring children – that’s it.

So, there’s the idea. How do I implement it? The thought of just approaching a school and asking “Hey, I’d like to set up a computer club for the children, how about it?” was a bit daunting. I already had in my mind the kinds of responses I might get, and that put me off a bit!

I was in conversation with a friend one day and he mentioned an organisation called Code Club Pro [4]. His brother is a teacher and Code Club Pro have an amazing group of volunteers to teach computing skills to teachers. Code Club Pro is a part of the Code Club family; there is also Code Club [5] which is aimed at teaching coding skills to 9 to 11 year old children.

The reason this has all kicked off in the UK is that the National Curriculum was changed a couple of years ago to put more emphasis on the fundamentals of coding skills (including understanding algorithms, decomposition, debugging).

This seemed to be the perfect opportunity right there: a UK-wide organisation where volunteers can register an interest to run a club, and schools and organisations can also register an interest to want to run a club. Having the backing of an organisation like this will make things much easier especially as you won’t be contacting the school out of the blue. Code Club’s website is really easy to use. It took me just 10 minutes to sign up and they have a checklist of the important things to do to help you get your club up and running.

If you can’t find an organisation at a suitable location for you, they also have a full list of all schools so you are able to contact a school even if they’re not actively looking to start a club. It’s up to you then to convince the school they need to start a club!

There are a few important – and legal – things to do before you are able to start your club. The most important one is to apply for a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) certificate. This is what used to be called the CRB (Criminal Records Bureau). Basically, is it safe for you to work with children? Each organisation you work with may require you to apply for a DBS certificate. As I found out, you can’t just forward a copy of your certificate to the next organisation. The non-optimal route is to apply for a DBS certificate for every organisation you are working with. I have two now, and then I found out about the Update Service. I highly recommend you opt-in to this when you get your first certificate. This is the official route that allows other organisations to officially confirm that you have a valid DBS certificate.

You will also need public liability insurance. If you’re setting up a club on your own this can be rather expensive.

The school or organisation may be happy to help you get your DBS certificate, but some may not want to get involved with insurance. There is an alternative – and Code Club recommend that you arrange your DBS certificate and insurance via STEMNet.

STEMNet is a UK wide independent charity which receives funding from the UK government, the Scottish Government and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation and relies on thousands of volunteers to inspire young people in STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. And thanks to a change in the national curriculum a few years ago, there is now more than ever a high demand for volunteers for computing.

So if you sign up to become a STEMNet Ambassador, they will organise a DBS check for you and cover you for public liability insurance as well. You will need to attend an induction session where you will learn about how to work with children – e.g. what to do if they tell you something they want to be kept private, etc.

As well as this very useful induction session, Code Club also have a number of training videos to help you get settled in to your club. If you’ve never worked with children before they are very useful and cover topics such as keeping children safe, helping children learn and volunteering in schools.

One of the conditions of STEMNet’s insurance is that a teacher must be present when you run your club. This is certainly a good thing, because in my experience they will be there for crowd control!

I was lucky enough to discover that Dormansland Primary School were looking for a volunteer to help run a club. The school is just a couple of miles from the office where I work. Communication with school was simple, a few email exchanges, initiated via Code Club, and an introductory meeting at the school was arranged. The teacher was really enthusiastic about the club and was pleased to have found a volunteer. The timing was just spot on – the meeting was at the end of November, and the school was planning to start the Code Club in January for the spring term.

I was really looking forward to it, albeit with a little apprehension. I had a naïve preconception about how the club would be run – calmly and orderly. It wasn’t like that at all, and in hindsight, that’s not a bad thing. That’s not to say it was wildly chaotic either! The thing that pleased me most was to see that the children were helping each other when they got stuck or had questions.

Code Club have a wide range of pre-prepared projects that you can use in your club – teaching coding in Scratch, Python and learning about HTML and CSS. The projects are also on Github and they are open to contributions.

Scratch [6] is a fantastic environment to teach young children about coding. It’s very visual and colourful, and code can be created by simple dragging and dropping of code blocks that snap to together.

I chose to teach the children Scratch as I found out from the initial discussions with the school that the children were starting to use Scratch in their lessons, and their computers have Scratch already installed.

Which brings me on to a few hints and tips – when you’re planning your sessions, it would help to find out exactly what facilities the school or organisation have. In particular, which versions of software do they have? The Scratch lessons on the Code Club web site are written for Scratch version 2.0. My club started using version 1.4. It’s not a show-stopper, since I managed to adapt the lessons for 1.4. Also, I found out that some of the computers didn’t have audio configured properly – that was a bit unfortunate to discover half way through a lesson writing a project called ‘Rock Band’! We switched to Scratch 2.0 online half way through the term.

Are the computer facilities networked? Do they have an internet connection? If you are using Scratch 2.0 you might want to consider whether the children could use the online version and create online accounts so they can show off their work outside of school. Obviously, you will need to discuss this with the school first, permission would have to be sought. In my case, some of the children already had an online account so when we switched to Scratch 2.0 they were able to save their stuff online.

Does the school have a projector? My school does have a projector, so I took the approach to work through the lessons on a projector so we could all work at the same pace. Perhaps one disadvantage is that you’ll be working at the slowest pace, so some of the more able children may get bored. An alternative is to print exercise packs for each child to work through at their own pace. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages; there is no right way so you’ll have to see what works for you. I think I’ll try a mixed approach next time.

I overestimated how much work we could do in a one hour lesson. We did tend to rush a bit towards the end of each session. I’m getting better at that now, but I’m still very pleased with how much we managed to get through.

On the last day of the club just before Easter I gave the children free rein to create whatever project they wanted to do and was pleased to see them come up with creations that I would never have expected. It’s all about igniting that spark of creativity and imagination in the children.

My second club is now running over the summer term. Initially, there wasn’t enough interest in the club to warrant running it. That was disappointing considering the good feedback I had from the first club. However, I was assured this was typical of all after-school clubs during the summer term. But after I suggested coming to the school to give a 5-minute pitch during an assembly about what Code Club is – including making a piano out of fruit (using the MaKey MaKey kit) – the looks of confusion on the children’s faces was just what I was after – and, disappointingly, not being able to launch rockets from the school playground – I was informed the club was now oversubscribed so unfortunately a few children had to be turned down. It’s slightly different to the spring term club – we have a wider age group this time, so I had to deal with a wider range of abilities. Still, I managed to keep them all engaged and interested and enthusiastic about coding which is the most important thing.

I haven’t mentioned yet that, being an after-school club means that it runs between 3.15pm and 4.15pm. It certainly helps to have an understanding employer who is willing to let you have the time away from the office. This was most definitely not a problem in my case; Dave, the owner of the company I work at is also passionate about ‘giving back to the community’ so he didn’t need much convincing.

I briefly mentioned earlier about Code Club Pro. If volunteering with children is not for you but still want to help in some way, consider Code Club Pro. With the change in the national curriculum, there is a big learning curve for teachers as well. Code Club Pro and other similar organisations, such as Computing At School [7], part of the BCS, exist to help teachers get up to speed with the technology they are expected to teach to children.

I believe passionately it’s up to us to get the next generation inspired by technology. For so long, education in the UK has neglected the importance of technology.

I hope you saw my Lightning Talk at the ACCU 2015 conference and that it’s motivated you to do something. I’m not sure which was more nerve-racking for me – giving a 5-minute talk to my peers about Code Club, or actually running a club for children. The lightning talk went well, and thank you to everyone who gave me feedback – especially Frances Buontempo who suggested I write this article.

And it’s not just the children that are gaining out of this – it’s been a great learning experience for me as well.

It’s up to us to inspire the next generation for our profession. Do something about it!

References

[1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/coderdojo

[2] https://hourofcode.com/

[3] http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Documents/2013/PatternsAndTrendsinUKHigherEducation2013.pdf

[4] http://codeclubpro.org/

[5] http://codeclub.org.uk/

[6] http://scratch.mit.edu/

[7] http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/

Notes: 

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