My team is currently supporting the delivery of a project to inspire young people in Tower Hamlets to consider coding as a profession.  This project is being run by Workshare in conjunction with resonate.  We’re using the Raspberry Pi and python to teach them some code fundamentals and there’s a competition at the end with some internships up for grabs.  Not bad at all!

I’m pleased with how the project has turned out. Since it’s a pilot we’ve had to “make do” with slightly average facilities and fairly “flexible” session plans but it is going well. While I don’t feel that the young people have learned a significant amount of coding there is no doubt that they are more interested in programming and have a better understanding of what coding really means.  That was, at least, one of the goals of the project and it’s a respectable achievement in my opinion.

I’ve also had the opportunity to use the Pi and it’s good fun.  Although we haven’t had a chance to use them with young people we did by some PiFace Digital devices and a few of the young people wanted to use them for their competition project.  I thought it would be a good idea to try it out too and I managed to put together a fun FizzBuzz game that I’ll share on GitHub soon.  I’m also going to write  a blog about how I put the programme together.