In an effort to make school-based ICT more than a matter of "MS Word, clip art and web research" a central London primary school held a creative activity day at which 240 children aged five to 11 learnt to write computer code.
On 28 September, in one of over 20 different creative activities, Pupils at Paddington's St Saviour's Primary School were provided with 30 Rasberry Pi's and Lego WeDo crocodiles, temporarily transforming their story corner into a programming corner. Using MIT's Scratch programming language, the pupils were first taught how to make "Scratch the Cat" move around their computer screens with simple coding commands. Then, with their newfound skills, they were able to program a motion sensing Lego WeDo crocodile to bite down on their finger when placed in the croc's mouth.
Co-founder and project director of the day's activities -- the adorably titled "Little House of Fairy Tales" -- was Nick Corston, whose own sons attend the school.
With very few programming skills of his own, Corston was inspired to set up the coding corner by Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk on how the current UK education system can kill creativity in children.
Don't miss: Raspberry Pi arrives in the classroom "This year I was further inspired by John Naughton's Observer article on the need to teach our kids to code. It reminded me of my Commodore PET programming days," said Corston. "When I came across Lego WeDo, Scratch and Raspberry Pi I put one and three together add added coding to this year's LHoF event."
As well as promoting the value of coding for the school curriculum, another aim of the project was to show kids that they could create their own computer games, rather than just playing them -- an initiative the school believes responds directly to Eric Schmidt's 2011 MacTaggart Lecture. The Google Chairman was critical of the UK's IT curriculum, suggesting that the country was throwing away its computer heritage. Corston shares Schmidt's concerns. "We wanted to inspire kids to create and not just consume. While being good fun in small doses, too much time on things like
Angry Birds and games consoles can ultimately rot kids brains," said Corston. "The kids loved the programming -- interestingly girls as much as boys. There was no age related lack of interest or ability; once we put a big red sticker on the left hand mouse button even the four year olds were off. They had no problem understanding the programming concepts we showed them."
Element 14, UK distributors of the Raspberry Pi, allowed St Saviour's to keep 15 of the back-to-basics computers, and plans are afoot to set up an after school programming club to further the kids' programming skills.
St Saviour's hopes that the simplicity of its coding corner might inspire other primary schools to hold coding classes of their own. You can find details on the coding corner workshop script here. The school is now looking to find corporate sponsors in order to buy its own Lego WeDo robotics kits.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
