A Visit to Parliament!

All blogs have to start somewhere and mine starts here. Recently I was invited by Code Club to be part of a small group to visit Parliament, an honor in my eyes to be asked. On the 25th March I headed down to London and Portcullis house for a 2 hour drop in session where MPs could come along and find out more about Code Club and what the children are being taught in these after school clubs.

I arrived at my destination with plenty of time and was soon clear of the airport style security and armed police. The setting up of the room was frantic with laptops and flat panel TVs being unpacked and set-up. My job along with the other volunteers who were was to give the MPs a real hands on experience of the Scratch environment and the projects that we teach.

The whole event was being sponsored by Samsung and the shadow minister for employment, a Stephen Timms MP (someone who I wouldn't recognise, but more about that later). The order of things was that each MP would be greeted on arrival by representatives from Samsung and Code Code before being passed over to a volunteer. After we had finished being enthusiastic they would then be asked to nominate a local public venue where a Code Club could be run in their constituency. The reason for this was that Samsung were going to help set-up 5 clubs around the UK (from the suggestions provided) providing hardware and resources.

Well the 2 hours soon passed which during I spoke to at least 5 people at length. Each MP seemed interested in the subject and what we were trying to achieve and all providing me with a good level of questioning.

Out of these 2 MPs stuck in my mind. The first was a male MP who presented me with his business card on arrival. I gave him the full tour of Scratch and what we are doing and even challenged him to an game of desert race (of course I let him win) and he went away seeming happy with what he had learnt. Afterwards a Samsung representative asked me if I minded appearing press releases and I replied that I didn't (its good for my ego). It was only afterwards, when press releases appeared, that I realised that this was Stephen Timms MP!

The other MP was my local MP, Harriett Baldwin. All of the invited volunteers had their local MPs invited so that they could find out what was happening in their constituency. On top of this I had tweeted Harriett personally on the Sunday with a gentle reminder which she swiftly replied to confirming her attendance and the fact she was looking forward to finding out more.

On her arrival we recognised each other and I was soon showing her everything about Scratch, what we were teaching to the children and why what we were doing was so important for the children's futures. She could see the potential benefits and was interested in visiting my club and seeing the children at work herself. She hoped that her visit would help drum up some additional local interest too. After my time with her she moved on and nominated the Malvern Cube as a public venue that could run a Code Club in Malvern. It was real pleasure to meet Harriett.

So now I'm in discussion with Harrietts office arranging dates as to when she could visit. My school is on board too thinking it would be a great thing for the school. With Malvern containing such a hub of technology companies it would be great for more Malvern schools to have their own Code Clubs. This year holds some great possibilities for Malvern and Code Club.