The generous folk at Pi-Top have invited Coding Evening to come to their new HQ in Bethnal Green - not only that, they've even offered the hungry teachers and programmers some food and alcoholic drinks to help encourage them all to relax and enjoy finding out more about how to teach computing. So, if you want to see what Coding Evening is all about, or are interested in seeing PiTop in action then what are you waiting for?

*NB - best access to the Pi-Top HQ is via the Oval - we will email photographic directions closer to the date

What sort of people attend the evenings?
We get a large range of people who come along - very often we have teachers who are complete beginners and have no idea of how to teach the coding side of the new curriculum and this is an excellent opportunity for them to discuss their ideas and gain some confidence by trying things out. We also get people involved with Code Club - an initiative to get coders to volunteer in primary schools to help run a club either after or before school (and some people looking for schools to volunteer in); we have attendees who help run Coder Dojos, which is a similar idea. We also get people who are employed in the coding industry who aren't able to volunteer in schools, but want to give something back to the community by chatting to teachers and helping to build their confidence. We get a lot of enthusiastic people who love Raspberry Pi, Makey Makeys or even Lego - we've even had a Lego sensor controlling a HAT on a Raspberry Pi to make lights come on controlled by Scratch. Finally, we have a core group of very enthusiastic teachers and school technicians who, like myself, have lots of ideas to share and want to show other people what they're doing in their schools and how other schools can further their computing teaching. Everything is presented in a non-threatening, informal way to help build confidence

What sort of thing can I expect if I attend?
The event starts at 6.30, but attendees arrive anytime between then and about 9 o'clock (which is usually when we start to wind down). When we're hosting the event in a pub, people tend to order food as the evening goes on and generally they gather in small group to discuss things. Usually, if a teacher is looking for something specific, I will recommend someone to speak to who can help them; however, most teachers seem to get the best out of the evening by simply chatting to each other and finding out about the resources on display. There are usually at least two Raspberry Pis set up with various HATs and things attached to the GPIO pins and some of the attendees bring their own tech to demonstrate and talk about either informally to small groups or to the group as a whole, as part of a Teach Meet style show n tell. There is no pressure to demonstrate anything or to get heavily involved, the emphasis of the evening is to feel comfortable and relaxed. So far, nearly all of the teachers who have attended one evening have signed up for the next one too because they have found it so valuable.

If you do have something you want to demonstrate, please let me know if you can by dropping me a quick email.

How much does it cost?
This is the best thing - Pi-Top have generously given us their offices for free so the evening costs absolutely nothing, and they've even offered to provide some refreshments for us all!

I hope you can come and join us!

Cat

Coding Evening by Cat Lamin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.