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, the volunteers local MPs were also invited to find out what was being taught in their constituencies, for me this was Harriett Baldwin MP. I had a fantastic meeting with her in Portcullis House where she showed interest in the whole subject area and could see the benefits the children were getting. Before she left she asked if it would be possible to visit my Code Club back in Malvern and meet the children herself. After checking with the school that it was ok a visit was scheduled for Friday 16th May.

On the day of the visit there was much excitement within the club with everyone waiting for our guest to arrive, some having stories to recall about them or another family member meeting Harriett. She arrived with her Senior Parliamentary Assistant Edward Davies and was soon being introduced to everyone. I quickly showed her the progression the children had made during this academic year, showing her examples projects first from scratch, then HTML & CSS before finishing on the Python project that they were working on that week. She was amazed by the creativity shown by the children, all starting on the same project but including their own interpretations by the end. She was also pleased to see girls learning to coding too and was eager to encourage more girls to learn theses skills. She talked to everyone and really engaged with the children finding out what each of them was doing and how they were finding the club.

All too quickly we were at the end of the club. She thanked the children for showing her their club and they thanked her for visiting too. Before Harriett had even arrived she had already got 2 more Malvern schools interested in running a Code Club and she asked me what else was needed. I replied with Code Club providing all the required projects and support for free all the was needed was more me's! Other volunteers with IT backgrounds that are enthusiastic about wanting to teach Computational Thinking and coding to the next generation of children. So to help towards this she said that she would talk to other IT companies on the Malvern Hills Science Park (where she has her constituency office) and also other companies that she came in contact with. In the days after the visit a press release was written to publicize the visit and the benefits the children were get from the club. Hopefully the local press will pick this up and even more people will hear about Code Club.

Additional links
HarriettBaldwin.com - MP meets new generation of Malvern’s brilliant brains

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Playing with Google Map Views

If you just want to get straight to the tour, follow the following link:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Great+Malvern/@52.110278,-2.330287,3a,90y,240.55h,90.68t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1s8VPHNkPUB-QAAAGuqllMng!2e0!3e11!4m2!3m1!1s0x4870f8ee8ec8d3fb:0xad5d1163a51c6fd


After reading about the launch of Google Map Views (http://maps.google.com/views) I thought that I would give it a go and add my own spherical panoramas to Google's Street View eco-system. There seemed to be plenty of people uploading single panoramas but I wanted to give their tour builder a try. Not wanting to start too big I chose Rose Bank Gardens in Malvern as a location to photograph. It's a small park in the centre of Malvern with a little network of paths and few entrance / exit points.

Now here is where I hit my first problem, Rose Bank Gardens wasn't mapped on Google Maps. Without this I would be dropping my panoramas into the middle of no-where. Luckily Google already had this covered with Map Maker (http://www.google.co.uk/mapmaker). It allows anyone to update Google's maps with new or corrected content. Unfortunately updates made to any of these systems aren't instantaneous and each application comes with its own learning curve. The major thing that slows down map updates is the fact that they are peer reviewed. Now in an area where there is lots of activity this might be quite a swift but here in the UK and more importantly the Malvern area it took a while. But after a few revisions I had completed the basic network of paths (I say basic because there are a few that at the time of writing I haven't yet created) and this then allowed me to move onto the next step, Google Map Views.

First I needed to shoot the panoramas. Luckily I had already shot a view by of Walenty Pytel's Buzzards sculpture so that was one down straight away. I picked a bright and sunny Sunday morning to visit Rose Bank Gardens, camera and tripod in hand. As I walked through the park I stopped at key points to shoot panoramas and by the end I had shot 23 new panoramic views. After a bit of processing at home I had 24 jpeg images ready to upload (I had to shrink my original images to meet Google's requirements). Now comes the convoluted bit, first I had to insert some metadata into my jpeg images to get Google to recognise them as panoramas. Luckily Google came to the rescue again providing a web application to do this (http://photo-sphere.appspot.com/).

Next I needed to upload my panoramas to somewhere. Now everything you do with Google is authorised through your Google account and this is no different. I had to upload my 24 panoramas to my Google Plus photo library from where I could finally add them to Google Map Views. Now all this might sound a bit long winded but some of it is being caused by the fact I shoot with my DSLR. Google's preferred route is to use an Android phone which would automatically do a lot of the steps for you.

With all 24 of my panoramas being shown on a map it was a process of placing each panorama in it's correct position, making sure north was pointing north and linking each panorama to each other. Now here is where the next delay came in, to make your panoramas visible to the public they have to be processed by Google. This time it's an automated system that looks at each panoramas to see if it is going to be accepted. Most of mine were accepted first time but a few were rejected due to my copyright notice being outside an acceptable area (not that I could find this area defined anywhere) and one which was rejected for an unknown reason that I had to take up with their support staff. Once they were all accepted the tour was visible for the world to see. To take a virtual wander around Rose Bank Gardens yourself you can follow the following link which will place you at the Belle Vue Terrace entrance:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Great+Malvern/@52.110278,-2.330287,3a,90y,240.55h,90.68t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1s8VPHNkPUB-QAAAGuqllMng!2e0!3e11!4m2!3m1!1s0x4870f8ee8ec8d3fb:0xad5d1163a51c6fd

So what have I learnt through this process? Well with everything being for free don't expect things to happen at the drop of a hat and expect to have to jump through other peoples hoops not ones created by yourself. As for my tour, it uses a method of navigation that people are becoming more and more familiar with all the time which hopefully means less people being stuck on the first view not knowing what to do next. The only warning I give is that if you navigate from one of my panoramic views to a Street View view then currently there's no way back! Outside my tour I've done my small bit to improve the mapping of Malvern by defining Rose Bank Gardens.

Finally what next? Well I want to complete the Rose Bank Gardens tour but I'm going to wait until a fallen stone wall has been fixed (you can see it from the Wells Road entrance). After that who knows, there are plenty of other places to create tours for in Malvern that the Street View Car can't get to, maybe Priory Park?

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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.

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