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You would be forgiven for thinking imagine that this club is for young people and care staff and their myriad of digital devices not working properly e.g. smartphones, tablets, smart speakers, smart watches, cars, etc.
It isn’t. Not really.
Although our friendly ICT person is not averse to free-of-charge helping out care staff, this club is for pupils at the school and they will be learning about and exploring extra topics.
At this lunchtime club they will also have the opportunity to learn how to fix gaming console issues e.g. parental controls being over-zealous, drives not working, system updates, etc.
The main focus though will be coding, an increasingly important subject – into which there are many different learning paths. In a single lesson, following the route already set out by in lessons by ‘Function Skills ICT’, here we can go ‘off-piste’ and learn computer coding.
Programming Basics
Scratch programming suits some students because the processes instantly produces manipulatable graphics. Scratch teaches and practices the basic concepts of programming in a fun and an immediately accessible way. Other students though enjoy diving straight in to lines of raw Python programming language.
- The United States’ NSA (National Security Agency) applies Python for intelligence analysis and cryptography.
- Developers wrote Youtube using Python (among other languages).
- Google is no stranger to Python as well: the company based its popular web search system on it.
Goldilocks
Scratch can be perceived as for the young, but Python can be perceived as dry because it’s text focused, so being flexible and technologically enthusiastic is useful to keep young minds engaged.
Enter Raspberry Pi, originally a £25 credit-card sized, fully functioning computer. Just have the Pi functioning on the desk is a novelty.
It’s serious kit, though, capable of doing everything you’d expect a desktop computer to do, from browsing the internet and playing high-definition video, to making spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing games.
Using additional modules, similarly-sized and low-cost, it also has the ability to interact with the outside world and has been used in a wide array of digital maker projects, from music machines, remotely operated vehicles, weather stations and tweeting birdhouses with infra-red cameras.
Minecraft
Most young people, parents and adults have heard of the game called Minecraft – it fascinates young minds and frustrates adults because when young people are transfixed by it, it’s difficult for them to listen to adults.
Microsoft created the game, and we also can use Microsoft’s Minecraft Education Edition to help young people to learn and explore code, through interactive challenges that really are alternatives to Scratch and Python.
Whichever path we explore though, they are too numerous to cover in a weekly lesson. Technology club has built-in interest for young minds, and we will help take them on a digital educational journey.
Further reading:
Python
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Scratch Programming – Massachusetts Instate of technology
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