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First published May 19, 2022 for Canopy Education How many times have you sat in a whole school training session, wondering whether you’ll learn anything useful this time while thinking longingly of your displays that need sorting, or that pile of marking on your desk? In my experience of English schools, it’s common to haveContinue reading “Why Primary Schools Should Consider Coaching Instead of CPD Days”

First published Jun 18, 2021 for Canopy Education In the post-lockdown climate, as schools return to some semblance of normality, decisions are being made about how, why and where core skills can be prioritised over other subjects. Computing leads in primary schools are being told by senior leaders that computing is no longer a priorityContinue reading “Why is computing still essential in primary schools?”

Following on from my post about the application for Google Innovator, here are thoughts on the build up to the training! Part 2 – the Build Up Differing from any other training I’d been on before, there was a lot more hype in the build up to Google Innovator – we were quickly added toContinue reading “Google Innovator – Nov ’19 Part 2”

I’ve been busy of late… mostly, I’ve been busy being a mother, which has meant that a lot of my interesting tech stuff has fallen by the wayside (I would love to have built an automatic pram rocker, but my baby brain would not even begin to know where to start). That being said, someContinue reading “Google Innovator – Nov ’19 part 1”

Once again, it’s been a busy few months both at work and outside of work. Sometimes I take a look at the last 12 months and wonder how so much could’ve happened in such a short amount of time. This time last year, I was excited about travelling to Glasgow and Belfast, now I’ve beenContinue reading “PiWars, Ada Awards and Text Adventures”

Gosh, I’ve been a little bit busy lately. I feel sad because it means my digital making has fallen by the wayside a little, but I guess we have to accept that sometimes life gets in the way. I can’t believe that it’s November tomorrow – I’m currently in Lincoln visiting my niece for herContinue reading “PyConUK 2017”

I bought the Pimoroni Mood Lamp kit way back in March at the Raspberry Pi Birthday Party, but I held off building it until Louise could come around, especially as I was nervous about soldering all of those pins onto the Pi Zero so I thought it would be a nice project for us toContinue reading “Pimoroni Mood lamp”

[edit] As of June 2017, there is a version of Scratch 2.0 on Raspbian which makes this worksheet obsolete [/edit] I’ve been running a few workshops for Crossover Solutions and have created some Raspberry Pi Physical Computing resources that seem to go down well with both children and adults and so, as a little EasterContinue reading “An Easter gift – RPi beginner’s worksheet”

It’s taken me far too long, but I’ve finally got my hands on a Micro:bit! I often get asked about these little micro-controllers and whether they are useful to have in the classroom so I’m looking forward to testing them out. Thank you very much to Nic Hughes for the loan! The first thing toContinue reading “Trying out the Micro:bit”

I’m very excited to be taking part in some events coming up where I will speaking and running workshops etc. First up is Coding Evening in Twickenham next week – the lovely Stokes and Moncreiff pub are hosting yet another Coding Evening for us on Thursday 19th May in their upstairs function room. The folksContinue reading “Upcoming Talks and Events”