Month: November 2014

New faces at Code Club

Code Club is on a mission to give as many children the opportunity to learn to code as possible so our team is growing quickly. These are the great people who’ve joined us in the last month:

Joe Scarboro
This month we’re pleased to welcome Joe Scarboro to the board of Code Club. Joe comes to us fresh from two years running the 3 Beards – an organisation who support startup life in London and cities around the world. As a former CFO and tech entrepreneur himself, Joe has a very strong background in both technology and finance. He shares our passion for teaching kids to code and is looking forward to joining the board to help steer the good ship Code Club.

Lauren Hyams
Lauren joins us from the Prince’s Trust where she worked on education projects running in schools. She’s come to run Code Club Pro which is our project set up to train teachers in computing so they can teach the new computing curriculum. We’re really pleased to have her on board and she’d love to hear from you if you think you can help in any way.

Sophie Deen
Having spent the last year setting up Code Club Pro from scratch, Sophie is now moving over to head up Code Club World. She will be introducing Code Club into countries around the world and supporting them as they grow their communities, so please give her lots of support (and tips on travelling)! She’s over here on twitter.

Daisy O’Reilly-Weinstock
Daisy comes to us from leading the innovation team at Cancer Research UK where she worked on the development of projects like Stand Up To Cancer, Citizen Science and Dryathlon. Daisy is here to lead our business development to ensure Code Club is sustainable for the future so we can continue to offer a great and even better service than we do now. If you think you can help Daisy then please do get in touch.

Greg Annandale
Greg is not only an excellent developer but also an incredible photographer. Check out his projects here and see for yourself. At Code Club he’s joined our development team working on creating tools to make life easier for the amazing trainers and volunteers who give up their time to go into schools to teach.

We have big plans for 2015 and our team will be growing again very soon, so keep an eye on http://www.codeclub.org.uk/jobs for more details.

Code Club and the New Computing Curriculum

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Running a Code Club is an excellent way to compliment the introduction of the new Computing curriculum, as it offers children lots of opportunities to learn and build upon skills taught in Computing lessons.

Computational thinking is a skill that takes time and practice to hone. Code Club provides an ideal space for children to apply their Computing knowledge, and improve their confidence as they undertake a range of novel projects.

Although we offer a suggested route through our curriculum, children have a huge amount of flexibility in deciding which projects to undertake, and in which direction to take them. Children have the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time on a project, in a supportive environment.

Working on an extended project also gives children the time to fully test their project, fix bugs and solve problems, elicit feedback from others and use this feedback to improve their creations. These are important parts of a project that can sometimes be cut short in a 1-hour Computing lesson.

As the new Computing curriculum equips children with computational thinking skills, Code Club provides a place for children with an interest in programming to share ideas and collaborate with likeminded people, and to broaden and extend their programming knowledge.

Factory Youth Zone Regional Hub!

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Last Thursday we launched our Regional Hub at The Factory Youth Zone in Manchester.
We are working with our partner Samsung to open five Hubs across the UK, which we hope will drive us further to meeting our aim of reaching 5,000 clubs and 70,000 children by the end of 2015.
Manchester’s The Factory Youth Zone in Harpurhey has been chosen to be the second Hub in the UK following the first Hub’s opening in London at the Dragon Hall community centre in Camden earlier this year. It will be equipped with laptops to run weekly coding sessions with young people and also host four training sessions a year to train Code Club volunteers.
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The Factory Youth Zone Code Club will start on Monday 10th November, and will give 15 young people from the local area at a time the opportunity to learn how to create games, animations and websites. Upcoming volunteer training events at the Regional Hub will be announced soon.