Code Club at Brighton Mini Maker Faire

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On Saturday I headed into town with the family to sample the culinary delights of the Brighton Food Festival. On the way we were distracted by a Dalek that was patrolling the back entrance of the Corn Exchange. Brighton had been invaded, not by Daleks, but by another species similarly not renowned for its emotional intelligence: Geeks. This was the entrance to Brighton’s Mini Maker Faire, where a motley crew of hackers had gathered to showcase the products of their labor and promote their respective communities (watch the short video below to get a flavour of what was going on).

Whilst my three year old daughter tried to introduce the Dalek to her toy rabbit, I ducked into the Faire to see what was going down. Amongst the various stalls I stumbled across a couple of friendly people representing Code Club.

The Code Club stall at Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2012

The Code Club stall at Brighton Mini Maker Faire 2012

If you’re not already familiar with Code Club, it is an initiative that sets out to change children’s attitude to coding and make it “cool and fun”. The founders of Code Club are aiming to have a Code Club in 25% of UK primary schools by 2014. Check out the Code Club website for more information and be sure to watch their entertaining and tech-celebrity-studded video (below).

It was great to hear that three local schools (Queen’s Park Primary, Westdene Primary and West Hove Junior) have already signed up to run code clubs. Linda Sandvik, one of the two founders of Code Club, told me that they currently have more volunteers to run the code clubs than they have interested schools. Hopefully more schools will get involved once they become more aware of what is on offer. The Code Club folks are providing some basic training to volunteers who don’t have experience of supporting children’s learning and they’re ensuring that all volunteers are CRB checked. If you’re interested in volunteering at a local school, you can sign up at the Code Club website. There are also regional Code Club Google Group where you can find out what’s going on locally.

Google Map showing location of local Code Club schools

Schools in Brighton & Hove that are running Code Clubs

Code Club have developed resources based around MIT’s Scratch. They intend to produce further resources in the coming months.

Just around the corner from the Code Club stall I found some chaps who were recruiting members for a newly formed local Raspberry Pi user group, called Brighton Pi. I signed up and, as promised, I’ve now been invited to join a Google User Group which is already busy with activity.

At this point my not-so-geeky wife insisted that we move on to the food festival so I didn’t get a chance to chat to the Greenfoot brigade who were also present.

When I eventually emerged from the Corn Exchange I discovered that my daughter had spent the whole time following the aforementioned Dalek around and trying to kiss it. She clearly has much to learn about Daleks.

  • LoftyPro

    Interesting review of things going on in Brighton I seem to miss out on these things…

    With my learning hat on… I have an interesting question about the use of the word “hacker” which seems to be coming up quiet frequently now in the context of a “geek” or programmer. This is quite a modern use of the word “hacker” which would normally be associated with more sinister contexts such as ‘a microcomputer user who attempts to gain unauthorized access to proprietary computer systems.’
    Is this shift in language intentional to try and encourage younger enthusiasts in to coding by using enticing labels?

    • http://jeremysblog.co.uk Jeremy Burton

      Funnily enough it’s the other way around. The meaning of the word as I’ve been using it predates the modern meaning of someone gaining illicit access to computer systems. Enter the word at Wikipedia for a detailed history and definitions.

      • Christian Smith

        Phew that was a very long read and I thought us students were discouraged from accepting what pops up in Wikipedia (I say that somewhat tongue in cheek). I accept what you are saying Jeremy and it was a valuable and interesting read – I stand corrected. I think my question may have been badly phrased so quoting from Wikipedia “Today, mainstream usage of “hacker” mostly refers to computer criminals”. Does using this term present a problem within education? Should we be using it and educating people as to the various meanings or is its association with such sinister activities too risky? Do we need to worry about this sort of thing?

        Whilst on placement I found myself concerned about my use of language and whether the words I was using were appropriate, I spent some considerable time considering this in all my planning. My reason for asking the question is that maybe I was just a little too hung up on it.

        I love the idea of the code club and making coding “cool and fun” so am going to spend sometime looking in to this to see whether it is something I can maybe take to Secondary School placement this year.

        Looking forward to next week!

        • http://jeremysblog.co.uk Jeremy Burton

          Yes – educate children in the alternative meaning of the word.