16 FUTURESCOT
SKILLS
28 April 2016
Prewired is a weekly
programming club for
under-19s hosted at
Codebase in Edinburgh
Hey teacher, leave
them kids alone. Why
children are better off
left to learn coding
by themselves
The co-founder of
a volunteer-staffed
programming club
explains why they take
a different approach
to the curriculum
BY FREDA O’BYRNE
I hear discussions about who or what
or how we should be teaching ‘kids’ to
code and I can’t help thinking to myself
that it would be much quicker if we just
let the children get on and learn – that
we should allow them, in fact support
them, to teach themselves. We seem to
have to find ‘someone who knows’ first
and this seems to me to be inherently
inefficient. Many young people do have
skills they can share, a group can start
from where they are and, by learning as they go, pushing boundaries,
stretching for things that they need to
learn, they can soon move from ardent
amateurs to capable young programmers.
Of course we should be training
teachers, and running large-scale
‘teaching to code’ events, roadshows
and workshops, but a myriad of small
scale community-embedded projects
will achieve far more, more quickly, at
the point of need than waiting for skills
to percolate into the classroom and
down to our children.
Prewired, one such project, is a
weekly programming club for under
19s. It is organised and run by volunteers – all mentors are volunteers – it is
hosted by Co debase and the children
do not pay to attend. It runs all year
round with some week-long projects
running in the school holidays. An average of 47 young people turn up each
week having registered online, sign
themselves in and sort themselves out
with either their own laptops or one of
the donated ones that Prewired owns.
They then sit down to work.
WHEN CHILDREN start they often
feel that they don’t know anything, feel
awkward and maybe even a bit intimidated. The first thing we do is to chat
to them about their interests, about the
kind of things they might like to try. If
it is appropriate we might introduce
them to another young person working
on a similar project, or we may get
them set up with an online learning
resource like Codecademy or Scratch.
Some young people have projects on
the go that they want to work on and
are quite happy to get themselves set
up and get going. If a child is finding it
difficult to get to know other children
we will see if we can help to make up
a mutually supportive group project.
We often ask more experienced young
people to help a less experienced
colleague out with a problem - not
only to solve the issue but also to build
relationships within the group.
Participants are supported in learning popular programming languages
including Python, Scratch, Java (especially for Minecraft modding), C++
(especially for Arduino control) and
HTML/CSS. In addition, volunteers
offer a number of dedicated teaching
sessions, workshops and projects. Past
topics include: Arduino kits, Lego
MindStorm robots, Scratch, mobile
apps with Android, website development, Git and GitHub, Raspberry Pi
and machine learning in Python.
MENTORING IS a delicate process. It
is not really about showing how things
are done, it is not about solving the
problems for young people, it is more
about listening to what they have to say
about the work they are doing, being
interested and guiding them to find solutions if they get stuck. Mentors come
mainly from Edinburgh University,
Codebase and its community, FanDuel,
Scott Logic and, like myself, the community at large.
Mentors ask participants to explain
what they are doing and how they are
doing it. This is a two-way process:
mentors are learning skills around
listening and explaining complex
concepts simply, whilst young people
are getting used to speaking to people
with differing levels of understanding
and ability, to be non-judgmental and
to share their knowledge and skills.
Young people are also learning that
it is alright to not know the answer,
it is alright to ask for help, and it is
definitely alright for to fail in a task.
It is a pleasure to see a child progress
from blaming the laptop for the failure
of an idea to realising that the process
of testing, refining and testing again
results in pure joy at the moment an
idea works.
Many years ago I made theatre for
young people. I found that the shows
we made were better if we involved
young people at an early stage - talked
to them, in fact, listened to what they
had to say and involved them in the
creative process. Their responses were
stunning, inventive, funny, relevant
and so, so much better than we could
have imagined.
I HAVE learnt a lot from working with
children and one of the main things
I have learnt is that they are at their
most engaged, most excited and most
motivated when they are doing something they want to do. Pretty much the
same as we adults are, in fact. So, if you
visit Prewired, you won’t see 20, or 10,
or possibly even five children engaged
‘A myriad of smallscale community
embedded projects
will achieve
far more, more
quickly..than
waiting for skills
to percolate into
the classroom
and down to our
children.’
Freda O’Byrne, Prewired