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. I'm sure either with or without the club they would all love using computers (they're a fantastic bunch), but I hope I have been able to open their eyes to a whole new world of possibilities and help fill their heads with ideas of what they could achieve. In the 3 short terms we had gone from coding Scratch, through to soldering Technology Will Save Us's DIY Gamer Kits and finally ending up coding Arudino's.
Everything I threw at them they handled with confidence, enthusiasm and creativity. I was concerned that the soldering was going to be too much, but how wrong I was, the level of concentration during those weeks was off the scale. Every single switch, resister, light dependent resister and buzzer on those kits was 100% soldered by the children. It would have been a lot quicker (and safer) to allow each child to solder a single switch and then do the rest myself, but it was achievement I wanted the children to feel for themselves. For them to be able to hold a piece of technology in their hands and feel proud at what they had put together, after all computers are nothing without hardware.
They also took their knowledge (and creativity) of Scratch and mapped those skills onto Arduino sketches with ease, it really showed that they were learning skills that they could transfer from one area to another.
Earlier in the year we were also lucky enough to be visited by BBC Midlands Today. They were looking for a school that used computers in their lessons and Malvern Wells was able to be that school. The kids loved seeing themselves on TV and I managed to get a small mention for Code Club in too.
The other good news, tinged with a note of sadness was that the teacher I had worked with for the last two years, Matt Warne, had got himself a new Job as the head of computing at the much larger school in Worcester. He said that I had inspired him to push his teaching career further into computing and after becoming a CAS Master Teacher he applied for the position of head of department and got it. I find his words very humbling and kind and wish him all the success that he deserves. I'm sure with our common interest our paths will cross again and I look forward it. Good luck Matt.
So now I'll spend my summer months making sure I'm up to date with all the new Code Club worksheets, reading up as much as I can on the BBC micro:bit (it looks like it could be so much fun, for everyone involved!), thinking about what to start the new Autumn term with and looking forward to meeting new children and a class teacher, all hopefully as eager to find out what this coding thing is all about.
Earlier in the year we were also lucky enough to be visited by BBC Midlands Today. They were looking for a school that used computers in their lessons and Malvern Wells was able to be that school. The kids loved seeing themselves on TV and I managed to get a small mention for Code Club in too.
The other good news, tinged with a note of sadness was that the teacher I had worked with for the last two years, Matt Warne, had got himself a new Job as the head of computing at the much larger school in Worcester. He said that I had inspired him to push his teaching career further into computing and after becoming a CAS Master Teacher he applied for the position of head of department and got it. I find his words very humbling and kind and wish him all the success that he deserves. I'm sure with our common interest our paths will cross again and I look forward it. Good luck Matt.
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