Twickenham Coding Evening – Change of Venue

As our usual venue is closed for renovations, we’re trying out a new venue, the Library Pot Games Cafe in Richmond.

Make sure you sign up here.

The Library Pot have generously given us their function room for free so the evening costs absolutely nothing, unless you want to get some food and drink from the bar upstairs! Please remember that the Library Pot is principally a games cafe so food service can sometimes be a little slow. There is usually a £5 fee for going to the Library Pot so grab this opportunity to have a quick look around and see what games they have in stock*

 

*NB you will have to pay entry fee if you choose to play games instead of attending Coding Evening – sorry 😉

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Congratulations Coder Dojo Richmond College

Today Katy Parnell, a regular at Twickenham Coding Evening, along with her colleague Janna, helped to organise a half term Coder Dojo at Richmond College. Workshops included Scratch, Kodu, Microbit and even Arduino and Katy managed to persuade Nic Hughes, Richard Hayler and Marc Grossman to come along and help out as well as myself.

With over 20 children in attendance, the event was a huge success and the children had an amazing time. There were lots of enthusiastic parents who really got involved too!

I’m so impressed with how amazingly hard Katy and Janna worked to make the event a success and I can’t help but feel a little bit proud that an alumni of Coding Evening is sharing her enthusiasm with others.

Well done Katy and Janna, good luck with the next one and hopefully we’ll see you all at the next Coding Evening in Twickenham on Thursday 10th November. Sign up here.

Twickenham Coding Evening September

As we all put our feet up and relax over the summer…please put a date in your diary for the next Twickenham Coding Evening, which will be held on Thursday 22nd September in the Stokes and Moncreiff.

Book your free tickets here.

Twickenham Coding Evening – June

Sorry about the mega short notice, but our next Twickenham Coding Evening will be Thursday 23rd June (after the election and all that).

Please note – this will be the last Coding Evening of the academic year – we will not have another until September so that teachers can enjoy their summer break! Thank you all for attending so far.

 

Southend Coding Evening

Southend are hosting their third Coding Evening on Thursday 26th May at the Temporary Arts Project again.

Details here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/southend-coding-evening-3-tickets-24995436022

 

Upcoming Events – Including a special big announcement!

We have an exciting couple of months coming up with a host of Coding Evenings in February and March, but first, I’m pleased to be able to announce that we have been invited to Pi-Top HQ in Bethnal Green for a Coding Evening. The lovely Pi-Top guys have very kindly offered to provide food and drink for attendees and an opportunity for people to have a play with both the Pi-Top and the Pi-Top CEED as well as the usual Coding Evening fun.

To sign up for the Pi-Top special event, click here.

Not only that, but Coding Evening will soon be heading to Jersey when the lovely Jason hosts his first event sometime before Easter (keep your eyes peeled for a date announcement soon).

The lovely guys at Hack Horsham hosted their first event last month and it was a huge success so we look forward to hearing about them hosting a second event soon. Thanks again for hosting guys!

I was recently at BETT and managed to spread the good word about Coding Evening both on the amazing beach stand for Exa Education and at the massive Teach Meet in main arena in the evening – check out the pictures at the end of this post! I also used my Scratch Pi-Stop sheet to deliver a workshop for the Raspberry Pi Foundation while at BETT which was great fun!

So, here are all of the upcoming events – hopefully you can head over to one of them!!

Pi-Top Special Event Thursday 25th February

Southend Coding Evening Thursday 10th March

Peterborough Coding Evening Tuesday 15th March

West Berks Coding Evening Thursday 17th March

Twickenham Coding Evening Wednesday 23rd March

 

Soldering at Twickenham Coding Evening

For the July meetup, I’m hoping to get Stuart to show us how to solder using the Learn to Solder Zoo Badge Kit from The PiHut. I’ve just written a post on my blog about how to use the kit, but it would be great to demonstrate how to use it in real life!

He’s also going to bring along a 3D printer so if you have any questions about how to use them he can at least attempt to answer.

Coming to the July meet up for the first time is Ben Dornan, a self confessed ‘Arduino Addict’ so I can’t wait to see what he’ll bring to show us all.

Don’t forget you can get your tickets here.

See you all soon,

Cat

Review – To code or not to code…

My students knew more about coding than I did, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and get ahead of their game. Trying to even the playing field: one 33 year old versus the 7 year olds. I went to my first meet up feeling a bit weary, would it be a room full of people speaking a (computer) language I had no chance of understanding? I couldn’t have been more wrong, I felt welcome from the minute I walked through the door and dove right into looking at the different programmes and gadgets available. I had a go at several things and cursed myself for not having brought my Ipad so I could download the programmes straight away.

After such a great experience I was very excited to come to the next meeting armed with my iPad. I got one-to-one tutoring on Scratch Jr and the most impressive thing was that I was able to get help even though I’d downloaded the app in my mother tongue, Swedish. The volunteers are amazing and it’s a wonderful “hands on” experience. I was encouraged to code a whole sequence on the large screen myself and the atmosphere was just as inclusive as the first time. A mix of people from different backgrounds and levels of experience all coming together to share and explore.

I can’t wait to go again, so what are you waiting for? Come along and share the fun, programme a unicorn’s hat or play music using fruit. You will love it and I’m sure your students will too!

Linda Lindberg

Teacher at the Swedish school in London

Review – Twickenham Coding Evening June

I attended the Twickenham Coding Evening for the first time this month and was really glad I did – thank you Cat for organising such a useful and friendly event!

As a secondary trained ‘ICT’ teacher, I have slowly but surely been adapting my teaching to the new computing curriculum, incorporating a bit of Scratch here and a bit of Python there. I have also been taking a keen interest in practical computing projects that use ‘MaKey MaKeys’ and ‘Raspberry Pis’; however, having never seen these in action in real life, I have been reluctant to commit precious budget to purchasing either! The friendly faces, advice and fun practical activities and projects on display at the meeting have inspired me. I am now the proud owner of two ‘Makey Makeys’, a roll of tin foil and a tub of playdoh, and my Raspberry Pi is in the pipeline.

I am definitely the kind of person that needs to talk to real people as opposed to chat on message boards and this gave me an opportunity to do just that in a very welcoming and informal environment. Thanks again for the opportunity!

Amy Box

St Marks Catholic School, Hounslow