CoronaVirus

Find out how Nicola from Australia has been delivering a club with a difference!

Over 10,000 miles away from UK HQ, Code Club Australia has entered a new phase of working as schools start to reopen. Nicola, the Programme Manager of Code Club Australia, caught up with  Lucia, the Head of Code Club UK and Ireland. She talked about what she has learnt from running an online club, and the impact that the lack of accessibility to digital devices and the internet is having on children’s learning. 

Setting the scene 

Code Club Australia has around 2000 clubs, half of these are based in schools and use the Code Club projects as part of the digital technology curriculum. A quarter of other clubs are in libraries, led by librarians and volunteers. 

During the eight-week lockdown, schools and libraries adopted new approaches and moved online to create meaningful spaces for learners to join and develop their digital making skills. 

Read about the online experiences of one library in South Australia. 

Supporting teachers 

Nicola was conscious of the pressures on teachers, moving from face-to-face teaching to home learning. To support this, Nicola now hosts an online Code Club. She calls into schools where children are spread out in several classrooms, as well as children coding from home. Nicola is delivering a club with a difference! 

“I was looking at other ways we could support the community and other ways we could continue to recruit volunteers whilst alleviating the pressure to set up a volunteer with a school and any safeguarding concerns.” 

Nicola kicks off each coding session by inviting a guest speaker to talk to the coders about a topic. Keeping within the theme, she then showcases a coding project for the class to work on. This session is recorded and hosted on YouTube to allow teachers to use the resource in their coding sessions. 

Watch this inspired session with guest speaker Rami from Space Australia, who sets the theme for a space coding project. 

Creating an equal learning environment 

Unesco has said 1.6 billion learners across the world have been impacted by school closures to help curb the spread of coronavirus. One of the biggest barriers to home learning has been lack of access to the internet or digital devices at home. 

Australia is no different. Outside of cities and in regional areas, the lack of access is very real. Research completed by Telstra estimates that 14% of houses do not have access to the internet, and this disproportionately affects families who are from Indigenous communities, speak a language other than English, or live in regional and remote areas. Telstra has been helping bridge this gap by providing connectivity to an additional 20,000 students for free when learning moved online.

Nicola has been making sure that no one misses out on learning opportunities, she sees Moonhack as a perfect example of a programme that can bring people together.

Moonhack is a free international event that brings together kids from across the world for a week of coding! This year 34,170 kids coded planet-saving solutions, and Nicola told us why this is such an engaging programme for those with limited access: 

“One of the reasons we have Moonhack online and why the Code Club projects are great is that they require low internet connectivity and the device doesn’t have to be complicated. They can just jump in and have a go!”

Take a look at some of this year’s submissions and the data breakdown.

Nicola also recognises the opportunities that running clubs online can bring to the programme; she hopes that they can help her reach communities in areas that are far away so that there is regular interaction:

“I want to make sure that those [online] offerings are just as valuable as our face-to-face ones.” 

The power of offline projects 

Along with Moonhack, Nicola and the team are adopting new approaches to make sure children with limited connectivity and accessibility have meaningful offline coding experiences. 

The team has been looking at offline projects and the important role they play in developing children’s computational thinking, thought processes, and problem-solving skills: 

“Schools want equity amongst their students, they want to share an equivalent offline resource if their students are unable to take part in an online session. 

It may even be so in line with the content that’s being taught online, that we build a worksheet that looks like Scratch, a print out of Scratch blocks where you physically build the program with the blocks”. 

Just jump in

Lucia saw how Code Club Australia had risen to the challenge, and adopted new approaches to support the Code Club community. She just had one final question for Nicola: What would you say to a teacher who was thinking of setting up their Code Club online? 

“My message is always that coding is not as hard as you think it’s going to be! And, you can do it! That message is still the same for online clubs, just jump in and have a go! It is worth it, the kids still love it, and they’re still engaged and their experiences are fundamentally very very similar to teaching face to face!”

If Code Club Australia has inspired you to set up an online club, we have resources to support you. Take a look at our club guidance or listen back to the community call series. 

To keep up to date on Code Australia, follow them on Twitter or like their Facebook page. 

Thinking creatively to give children in India meaningful learning opportunities at home

Pi Jam Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in India, equipping students and educators with tools to learn and create with technology. Pi Jam has been committed to ensuring that learning continues during the coronavirus pandemic. 

We want to share some of the amazing work that Pi Jam has done to support young coders and volunteers. 

Connecting with WhatsApp 

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the digital divide more than ever. Pi Jam started to think about how they could still provide a learning experience for their Code Club members who were now learning from home, often with limited connectivity and hardware.  

Pi Jam decided to send computer science videos and worksheets of unplugged activities through WhatsApp! The response from Code Club members was amazing, and you can see some of the projects they completed (in Telugu) in the image below. 

“While there are a lot of high-quality unplugged resources, we realised the need for making contextual content relevant to the needs of the students we work with. Hence we started creating unplugged content in-house so that students have a seamless learning experience.”

– Pranjali, Pi Jam Foundation

Doorstep learning 

Yashoda, a Pi Jam instructor and Code Club volunteer who lives in rural Parbhani, Maharashtra, found curious students showing up at her door wanting to learn! Yashoda wanted to keep teaching her students, and following the local public health guidelines on social distancing, she started to teach in small groups, using a basic Raspberry Pi setup. 

Yashoda supporting young learners

Pi Jam had this to say about Yashoda: 

“We are proud to work with Yashoda, who has evidently not seen her context as a limitation, using this opportunity to innovate her instruction in a way that makes her budding problem-solver students proud.”

Pi Lab goes live! 

Pi Jam Foundation runs a programme called Pi Lab, and the team has been providing live online computer science sessions for students from various partner schools (government and low-income schools) in Pune, Maharashtra. The students who have joined this online learning experience are aged 10 to 14 and had previously attended a face-to-face Code Club before social distancing measures were introduced.

Pi Lab said this about the sessions: 

“For most of the students in these sessions, it was their first-ever experience with creating using computing skills, and it has been incredible to witness and encourage their inquisitive minds.” 

Stay connected 

The work of Pi Jam Foundation is just one inspiring example of how Code Clubs across the world are staying connected with their members during these extraordinary times. Share with us how you have been staying in contact with your Code Club on Twitter at Code Club UK or Code Club World and use the hashtag #MyCodeClub.

Want to find out more about Code Club in India? Contact Divya and Vasu, who are happy to chat with you about the Code Club community in India. 

Be inspired by Code Club Canada and their response to the pandemic

Head of Code Club UK and Ireland Lucia Manzitti has been finding out how Code Clubs around the world are keeping kids coding during the pandemic. Recently she spoke to Maddy Bazett, Program Owner of Code Club Canada.

Getting Code Club Canada online!

When schools and community spaces started to close across Canada, Maddy and the team knew they needed to rise to the challenge. They wanted to make sure that kids attending Code Clubs could keep coding from home, and that others new to coding had the opportunity to have a go!

The team’s quick reaction enabled them to set up free online Code Club sessions within the first week! At first, they were launched as a public drop-in model, but this was soon adapted to attendees having to preregister for a school term. Code Club Canada set up six coding sessions and a final sharing session both in English and in French, to offer support to learners speaking either language.

Lucia was interested to know how parents reacted to the change in sign-up, from public drop-in to preregistration, and the more structured content: 

“Parents appreciated the structure and what to expect from the next session. Knowing the details put parents’ minds at ease, they could now count on something consistent. As weeks went by we noticed that there were repeat children and parents attending the sessions.” 

An online session explained 

Every session is hosted on Whereby, and has a facilitator instructor and a moderator to monitor members’ questions and chat. This team comes from KCJ, a bilingual Canadian charity whose mission is to give every Canadian child access to digital skills education, and who support Code Club Canada with their mission. 

Lucia asked Maddy how they planned their sessions:

“We needed some structure, instructors needed to know what to prepare and it made sense for us to utilise the Code Club curriculum and the progression of a programming language through a module.” 

The young learners mainly work on Scratch and Python projects as the experience is entirely within the computer. Maddy shared that from the 17 March to 14 May, members have spent a total of 763 hours coding online with Code Club Canada! 

Members try out the Code Club Rockband project in Scratch!

How did learners adjust to an online experience? 

A live online Code Club provides a different learning environment for members compared to an in-person club. While before members were used to buddying up with a friend to work through projects, they now work online, independently, and sometimes with a parent. 

Facilitators shared how learners had become more dependent on the step-by-step instructions, and got used to working on a split screen and switching tabs. With time, they became more confident, interacting with the facilitator, sharing their screens, and using their mic to ask questions. 

An online Code Club still provided an opportunity for young coders to share their cool projects with their peers. But rather than their peers being from their school, they were often from a completely different part of the country.

“We have heard back that kids are very excited when a club member is from another part of Canada and are in awe and ask: ‘How are you here, from somewhere else?”

Even in these strange times, Code Club is still helping people to connect. 

A message from Maddy on setting up an online club 

“Definitely try it! Even if you start with one online club or post pre-recorded sessions for your community to use and engage with. I think people are very appreciative in this time of free, fun and accessible content that kids can spend time on, especially when it’s educational.

And potential future volunteers gain confidence in seeing how a session is run (and that it isn’t so hard!) before they commit to starting one themselves.”

If Code Club Canada has inspired you to set up an online club, we have lots of resources to support you. Take a look at our club guidance or listen back to the community call series. 

To keep up-to-date on Code Club Canada, you can and follow them on Twitter or like their Facebook page.