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On Saturday I went back to Ysgol Bro Ddyfi to run my Android Programming Family Fun Day. This didn’t go quite as planned, but it was OK in the end… The way the day is set up is that the first half involves everyone getting the software installed on their own computers, and then working together to build a simple app, edit that app, and get it working on their phones. Then we’re supposed to break for lunch and after lunch everyone does their own thing. This didn’t quite go as planned last weekend – we ended up having to busk it a bit moreRead More →

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Last Friday, I went to Ysgol Bro Ddyfi as part of their transition week. In transition week the primary students who’ll be starting secondary in September come and visit the school, and do a load of taster sessions, getting a feel for what secondary stuff is like and finding their way around the school. SO about a month after I went to Mach (with Jordi and Mariona from Girona) to meet the primary teachers and talk about Scratch and Raspberry Pi blog here, we went back to talk to the kids themselves. We’re lucky that Jordi and Mariona are still visiting Aber, so three ofRead More →

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I went to Machynlleth this afternoon to visit Ysgol Bro Ddyfi, one of the schools I’m working with on the GOWS project. A group primary teachers from the feeder schools were there, and we were meeting up to talk about computing, computational thinking, and how the project is coming along. Jordi and Mariona, who are visiting researchers from Girona, came along too and talked about the work they’ve been doing with local primary schools back in Catalonia. The way Tomi (Bro Ddyfi’s ICT teacher) and I have been thinking, Raspberry Pi computers and the scratch programming language are the key things for getting computing intoRead More →

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Yesterday I arranged a tour of Aberystwyth University for a group of local schoolteachers, as part of the GOWS (Get On With Science) project. I’m a “Science Champion” (Champion, I tell you) on this project, which involves working with a cluster of schools looking at science, women in science, and transition from primary to secondary. The schools I’m working with are Ysgol Bro Ddyfi, the secondary school in Machynlleth, and that school’s feeder primaries; yesterday’s visit had Tomi from Ysgol Bro Ddyfi, Alwyn from Ysgol Gynradd Machynlleth, Llinos from Ysgol Gynradd Glantwymyn, and Sarah from Ysgol Llanbrynmair. First off, we met Jordi Freixenet from theRead More →

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A couple of weeks ago I went to the second Machynlleth Raspberry Jam, and ended up being interviewed for Science Cafe on BBC Radio Wales. You can listen again at that link (for a bit). The program also includes my friend Tom Crick from Cardiff Met, who visited the raspberry pi factory; the bit with the Machynlleth Raspberry Jam is towards the end about 21:30 so you can skip to that bit if you want to. The Raspberry Jam was great fun, one of the highlights for me was winning an auction of a raspberry pi case, handmade by Robert (one of the Machynlleth RaspberryRead More →

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In: Computing at School, technocamps
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I’ve been working on the Technocamps project for the last year, and one of the things I’ve been heavily involved with is a workshop on AI, loosely based around Alan Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (also known as The Turing Test Paper). You can find that paper online in loads of places, e.g. http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html. In it, he considers the question “Can computers think?”. The AI workshop helps schoolkids to consider the same question. It’s the Alan Turing Centenary year which is a major motivation for taking on this topic, but I suspect I’d have put together a workshop on this anyway as it’sRead More →

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On Saturday I went to Machynlleth for a “Raspberrry Jam”; these are get-togethers for people who like the Raspberry Pi low-cost computer (if you’ve not heard of the Raspberry Pi, then head here. They’re great. The idea of Raspberry Jams is that people who like the Raspberry Pi get together and share ideas about what they’re doing with them, they are a relatively new thing, and they’re great fun. My Pi arrived the day before the event and I forgot to buy a cable to attach it to my telly, so I didn’t have anything to show. So I took my camera, a Canon PowershotRead More →