Running A Code Club, Not A One Way Educational Street

You'd think that running a Code Club was a one way educational street, with the volunteer enthusing the children about what they could make these things called computers do, but after 5 years I've found the street to be very different with traffic flowing in both directions! You see by day I'm a software...

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Code Club, Making a Difference

For the last 4 years, once a week, during term time I have run an after school Code Club at a local primary school. If you haven't heard of Code Club before it's a nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. In the 4 years since it's launch there are now more than 4,500 clubs being run each week across the country reaching over 64,000 children, and all this...

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Why now is a great time for VR and digital planetariums

We are at the beginning of a fantastic period for Virtual Reality, the latest of many waves going back as far as I can remember. With a whole field of VR headsets (Oculus Rift, Microsoft Hololens & Google Cardboard to name but 3) all vying to be the next big thing, focus is switching from the devices...

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Another Code Club Year Comes To An End

Another amazing Code Club year complete, my 3rd and I'm still having so much fun. Of course all this is mixed in with feelings of sadness as I said goodbye to some of my children as they move onto secondary school. But as I saw them for the last time I was proud at what Code Club had enabled me to do....

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Adventures in Sonic Pi

Well what a fun few weeks this has been getting to this point. I had been aware of Sonic Pi for quite a while, but not having a Mac or easy access to my Raspberry Pi I hadn't been able to play much. This all changed with the release of the PC edition. With easy access to desktop PC's and laptops around...

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Playing in a Dome

I love going out and creating spherical panoramas of the places I visit, its a fantastic way to capture some amazing sights. But after I've created them I'm left with the same ways to visualize them, either using some sort of interactive viewer or a flat static view which sort of removes the immersive...

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An MP Came Visiting

Back at the end of March I was lucky enough to be invited by Code Club to attend Parliament and be part of a drop in session for MPs. I was 1 of 5 volunteers who got to talk to MPs about what a great thing Code Club was and what the children were learning from it. Along with the volunteers being invited,...

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