Tomorrow I will be running a workshop for MozFest, a massive community event in London organised by Mozilla. Young Raspberry Pi enthusiast, PiNet creator and all round evil genius Andrew Mulholland somehow found himself organising a Rasperry Pi Zone at the event (I definitely had no involvement in this whatsoever) and so he coerced/bullied meContinue reading “A Raspberry Pi Scratch Resource”
Tag Archives: Primary
A reflection on teaching coding
After another year at Pycon and really throwing myself into the coding community with my coding evenings and any other events that have caught my eye, I find myself reflecting on the purpose of teaching coding within a primary school. What do we hope to achieve by teaching complex languages like Python and Ruby? WhyContinue reading “A reflection on teaching coding”
Apologies for Silence
So, last year I spent my summer writing blog posts left right and centre and I have so many new products to try out and blog about, but I have a huge apology to make first… Basically, I started to write a short iBook about how to begin teaching primary coding which was aimed atContinue reading “Apologies for Silence”
Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) 2015
So, this post isn’t specifically about coding in the primary curriculum, but I wanted to share with you nevertheless. Last week I spent a week in The Netherlands courtesy of Apple who selected me as one of their distinguished educators for 2015. The ADE programme has been running for 21 years, since 1994, and thereContinue reading “Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) 2015”
Sonic Pi
One of the things I was shown at Picademy, was Sonic Pi. At the time I thought it was a great resource, but too difficult for me. Since then, I was lucky enough to meet creator, Sam Aaron and persuade (ok..bully) him to visit my school and run an all day workshop about the software.Continue reading “Sonic Pi”
The PiStop
I’ve realised that I haven’t yet written a blog post about my favourite bit of kit for the Raspberry Pi, the PiStop by 4Tronix. So first lets talk about why I like it so much then I’ll talk through a demo of using it. Earlier in this blog, I talked about the CamJam EduKit andContinue reading “The PiStop”
Astro Pi Competition
Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the Raspberry Pi third birthday party event in Cambridge. While I was there I took the opportunity to talk to the lovely Dave Honess about the competition he is helping to run for Raspberry Pi in collaboration with the UK Space Agency, Astro Pi. The competition was launchedContinue reading “Astro Pi Competition”
Coding Evening and BETT 2015
This week I decided to do something a little different – I’ve seen lots of people chatting about Raspberry Jams (meetups for Pi lovers), I’ve been to a Code Club meetup which had a lot of volunteers and not a lot of teachers and I’ve been to a CAS hub for teachers in Hammersmith. TheContinue reading “Coding Evening and BETT 2015”
2015 – the year of new stuff
I’ve not posted for a while – things have been busy – my father passed away in October and so I have been dealing with that, but as time has moved on and a new term has started I feel ready to dive back in head first. Anyway, that’s no excuse – my goal forContinue reading “2015 – the year of new stuff”
Espresso Coding
We’ve been using Espresso in my school for a number of years for subjects like history and English. I’m sure most schools have one of their servers installed somewhere in a forgotten corner. As a maths and ICT teacher, I’ve never really found much use for it, but occasionally I’ve given it a cursory glance.Continue reading “Espresso Coding”