With the start of a new school year, we're embarking on a new journey to connect with the schools and communities we work in by providing a free after-school coding program.
As a former teacher myself, this is a very exciting opportunity, as I get to connect with schools, other teachers, and the community I live and work in, Tower Hamlets in London, United Kingdom.
Kano has partnered with Christ Church Primary School in London to run a year-long code club at our London office.
I will be running the sessions alongside other members of our team, using our Creative and Coding Curriculum to teach creativity with code to 20 eager learners.
Our goal for the year is to complete all of Kano's EDU curriculum (Creative, Coding, Pixel, and Motion Sensor) as well as use the sessions as a testing ground for more advanced Raspberry Pi projects that we will share with the community.
So far we've run 3 sessions and you can feel the excitement in the air. Our learners have built their own computers, named our club, and started to explore all the different apps inside the kits.
To get the kids into coding we ask them to choose their nicknames, their very own "hacker handles" they are going to be using for the year. I sat down to talk to a few of them about their time so far at Kano.
I'm really excited to learn how computer are made! - FabulousFury
Fabulous Fury told me: "At the code club, we've been building computers and playing games. I'm really excited to learn how they are made!"
MaraDona thinks "The best thing about Kano Club is that we've been playing games, hacking Minecraft, and building computers."
Lovely said, "I really liked building the Kano computer because it was easy and fun and I want to be able to play games on it."
Lastly, we got some words from ISpy, "I've been coding on the Kano Computer Kit, in multiple apps and its fun to learn code by instruction. It gets harder and harder as you go on, but once you learned all the steps before it gets easier."
All in all, it will be an exciting year with creativity and code. We are excited to see what each learner will get out of our hour sessions.
We will share how we run the club sessions, including photos documenting how we use the kits, resources the kids create and anything else you may need to get inspiration to run your own Kano Club.
If you have any questions about our Kano Club or need inspiration just email us at education@kano.me!
