Goodbye, Ms Kirsop :(

We’re really sad to be waving goodbye to the Head of Code Club UK, Laura Kirsop, as she moves on to pastures new.

Laura has been with Code Club pretty much since the beginning, in one form or another. At first she was the teacher working with a volunteer at one of our first ever pilot clubs in Soho Parish School, then she came to Code Club as a Growth Captain and our second ever member of staff. Laura has developed the UK team and worked with them to grow our Code Club community to over 2300 clubs here in the UK; many volunteers will know her cheery smile from meet-ups across the country. It’s a great shame that we have to say goodbye to her, but I’m sure you’ll join us in wishing her all the very best of luck in the future.

Laura has helped build the foundations for Code Club’s growth, leaving a fantastic legacy, but now we’re looking looking for a confident and ambitious General Manager to lead Code Club’s activities here in the UK and take us to the next stage. Please help us find the right amazing person to join our team by spreading the word about this fantastically juicy role!

Code Club Volunteer Training

Here at Code Club we think our volunteers are the coolest people on the planet, and we want to do everything we can to support them and encourage new people to join the gang.

Over the past few months we’ve been developing some shiny online training to give our volunteers all the information and inspiration they need to start their Code Club journey. There’s something for everyone — whether you’re new to volunteering in schools or have never used Scratch before, we’ve got you covered!

New volunteers will need to complete two required sections covering the practicalities of setting up a club and volunteers’ responsibilities when it comes to keeping children safe. These should take less than 45 minutes, so you can get ready to go in a lunch break, commute or free period.

Our shiny new training!

We’ve been preparing this training since last summer, and we couldn’t have done it alone!

The marvellous team over at Chocolate Films have been making video content and some very cute animations of our robots and we’re really grateful that Perrymount Primary School and Moortown Primary School allowed us to visit their clubs with cameras and big furry microphones to catch them in action.

We also persuaded several of our volunteers to sit in front of cameras under hot lights telling us about their adventures helping children learn to code – so a big thank you to David Balkwill, Alex Blewitt, Paula Clerkin, Phil Golden, Andy Lulham, Geri Reid and Matthew Valentine-House too.

We’re proud to say that the training is now live! If you’re an existing volunteer you can find it by signing into your account, and if you’re thinking of starting a Code Club then sign up and check it out today. :)

We will also be running some real life training sessions across the country too, so look out for those coming to an area near you in 2015!

New Scratch projects

Our wonderful Head of Education Rik has been hard at work updating the Code Club Scratch curriculum in the past few weeks. Here’s a quick look at the new projects he’s developed:

	Memory — memorise and repeat a sequence of random colours!
	Dodgeball — a platform game, in which you have to dodge the moving balls and reach the end of the level.
	Brain Game — a times table quiz, in which you have to get as many answers correct as you can in 30 seconds.
	Catch the Dots — a clone of a great game called ‘Gyro’. Match the dots to the correct part of the controller.
	Clone Wars — use lightning bolts to save the Earth from space-monsters.
	Create Your Own World — learn how to create your own open-world adventure game!