Funded by the Scottish Government Children, Young People and Families Early intervention Project Fund, practioner staff have recently completed a either a 12 week course evening course or a 4 week Saturday course providing an Introduction to Creative Computing for After School Care Workers.
This course aimed to equip staff with the skills needed to introduce creative computing into their after school care setting using a variety of tools, including: Scratch, Microbit and the Raspberry Pi. Throughout the course they were able to learn how to create games in Scratch and make controllers using the Makey Makey and everyday objects such as play-doh or fruit. They also made digital badges, games and music using the Microbit and got creative with Minecraft on the Raspberry Pi.
Computing Lecturer, Amanda Ford who created and facilitated the course has been an Microsoft Innovative Expert Educators (MIEE) for the past 3 years for her work with teaching school children code using scratch and Kodu. She runs a Coder Dojo within a local primary school and organises and delivers Game Jams in primary and secondary schools on behalf of local authorities.
Amanda said, “I have been involved with the SOSCN project since the beginning and it has been amazing to see the project develop from idea to students participating in the lessons. Over the course the Out of School Care Workers were given a kit bag from SOSCN comprising of Raspberry-pi, Makey Makey and Microbit then were shown how to make the most of these in their services. They were taught how to make games in Scratch, program tunes on the Mircobit and learning programming with Python in Minecraft all on the Raspberry Pi. It was amazing to watch the students each week grow in confidence in their learning and it was important for me to keep this up during the course as everyone had differing experiences of computing and hearing about how they had been trying activities in their services made ti worthwhile hearing about all the great things they are doing whether it was a personal achievement of doing some more python programming in Minecraft on their own at home or trying out the activities for the first time with a group of children. It was a pleasure to work with the students who were keen to learn as much as possible in order to provide more activities for the children they work with.”
Irene Audain MBE, Chief Executive, Scottish Out of School Care Network said of the programme:
I am very pleased with the partnership with WCS and in particular the work of the tutor, Amanda Ford for the excellent rapport with students, from out of school care services, who have gained new STEM skills and signed up to be SOSCN STEM Champions through the WCS Creative Computing Course.
She continued, “This was funded via SOSCN's Scottish Government CYPFEIF & ALEC project Fund, allowing SOSCN to pilot such training. After the success of the two 2017/2018 courses, we look forward to developing this creative partnership further in 2018/19!"
For the final week of the course the participating staff were asked to anonymously provide feedback and the comments were extremely positive and encouraging. Comments included,
“I loved learning so many new things and seeing Amanda at every session”
“Have enjoyed the whole learning experience – thank you so much Amanda for making it fun to learn new things!”
The participants were presented with their certificates for completing the course at a Celebration Event on 13th March at the Paisley Campus. Well done everyone!