We are so excited to share another story from the community! Our series of community stories takes you across the world to hear from young people and educators who are engaging with creating digital technologies in their own personal ways.
Selin and her robot guide dog IC4U.
In this story we introduce you to Selin, a digital maker from Istanbul, Turkey, who is passionate about robotics and AI. Watch the video to hear how Selin’s childhood pet inspired her to build tech projects that aim to help others live well.
Meet Selin
Selin (16) started her digital making journey because she wanted to solve a problem: after her family’s beloved dog Korsan passed away, she wanted to bring him back to life. Selin thought a robotic dog could be the answer, and so she started to design her project on paper. When she found out that learning to code would mean she could actually make a robotic dog, Selin began to teach herself about coding and digital making. Selin has since built seven robots, and her enthusiasm for creating digital technologies shows no sign of stopping.
Selin and her robot guide dog IC4U.
One of Selin’s big motivations to explore digital making was having an event to work towards. When she discovered Coolest Projects, our global technology showcase for young people, Selin set herself the task of making a robot that she could present at the Coolest Projects event in 2018.
When thinking about ideas for what to make for Coolest Projects, Selin remembered how it felt to lose her dog. She wondered what it must be like when a blind person’s guide dog passes away, as that person loses their friend as well as their support. So Selin decided to make a robotic guide dog called IC4U. She contacted several guide dog organisations to find out how guide dogs are trained and what they need to be able to do so she could replicate their behaviour in her robot. The robot is voice-controlled so that people with impaired sight can interact with it easily.
Selin at Coolest Projects International in 2018.
Selin and her parents travelled to Coolest Projects International in Dublin with Selin’s robotic guide dog, and Selin and IC4U became a judges’ favourite in the Hardware category. Selin enjoyed participating in Coolest Projects so much that she started designing her project for next year’s event straight away:
“When I returned back I immediately started working for next year’s Coolest Projects.”
Selin
Many of Selin’s tech projects share a theme: to help make the world a better place. For example, another robot made by Selin is the BB4All — a school assistant robot to tackle bullying. And last year, while she attended the Stanford AI4ALL summer camp, Selin worked with a group of young people to design a tech project to increase the speed and accuracy of lung cancer diagnoses.
Through her digital making projects, Selin wants to show how people can use robotics and AI technology to support people and their well-being. In 2021, Selin’s commitment to making these projects was recognised when she was awarded the Aspiring Teen Award by Women in Tech.
Listening to Selin, it is inspiring to hear how a person can use technology to express themselves as well as create projects that have the potential to do so much good. Selin acknowledges that sometimes the first steps can be the hardest, especially for girls interested in tech: “I know it’s hard to start at first, but interests are gender-free.”
“Be curious and courageous, and never let setbacks stop you so you can actually accomplish your dream.”
Selin
We have loved seeing all the wonderful projects that Selin has made in the years since she first designed a robot dog on paper. And it’s especially cool to see that Selin has also continued to work on her robot IC4U, the original project that led her to coding, Coolest Projects, and more. Selin’s robot has developed with its maker, and we can’t wait to see what they both go on to do next.
Help us celebrate Selin and inspire other young people to discover coding and digital making as a passion, by sharing her story on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
A year ago we launched our Introduction to Scratch path of six new coding projects. This was the first path to use our new 3…2…1…Make! approach for prioritising fun and engagement whilst enabling creators to make the things that matter to them. Creators learn how to add code, costumes, and sounds to sprites as they make animations, a game, an app, and a book.
As the first birthday of the Introduction to Scratch path approached, we decided to review and refresh each project. We used input from the community, looked at remixes of the projects, and analysed visitor data to guide us in our review.
We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who engaged in focus groups, provided input via social channels, or clicked the project feedback buttons. We really appreciate you taking the time to reach out and we hope you will be pleased with the changes.
Our project paths have a 3-2-1 structure (click the image to enlarge)
The updates are split into two parts, those we made specifically to the Introduction to Scratch path, and changes made across all of the 3…2…1…Make! projects.
3…2…1…Make! projects
The first thing you might notice is the revamp of our Introduction step, now called ‘You will make’. This simplified step focuses on setting the scene and encourages creators to play with a completed project example.
Picture Conor McCabe Photography
Also changed is the Reflection step, replaced by ‘Quick quiz’ — a much neater page that guides creators through three questions before awarding a project badge.
Introduction to Scratch
Here is an overview of the Scratch path to tell you more about the projects and the changes we’ve made to the content.
Creators can start using the updated Scratch projects right away!
Our first three projects in the path introduce creators to a set of skills and provide step-by-step instructions to help them develop initial confidence.
In this project, creators design a space scene with characters that emote to share their thoughts or feelings. We received some amazing feedback from a member of the Deaf community to enhance the Nano uses sign language task and include a great new boxout to prompt discussion amongst our creators.
We also heard from a couple of club leaders that the Text to Speech extension in Scratch was a great addition to this project so we added an optional Text to Speech information card to the Upgrade your project step.
The bus in the Catch the bus project is a tour bus, but we originally used the school backdrop as a departure point. We liked how the backdrop looked but now recognise that doing a project about a school bus whilst in a club was probably not the most popular choice. Please forgive us! The project now uses a nighttime city scene.
We also removed the use of the ‘Timer hat block’ from this project — it isn’t needed for the rest of the path and has behaviour that complicates things. The ‘timer hat block’ has been replaced by a ‘wait block’.
We have loved engaging with the community submissions of this project and really enjoyed seeing how quickly we can find the small bugs on each level of the games that have been created. With replicating that enthusiasm in mind, our changes to this project focused on young creators sharing their project and playing projects created by others.
Our new Share and play step has a number of options, including sharing in a club, submitting your project to a shared studio, and experiencing remixes as a user. We have also embedded some community projects into the step to provide upgrade ideas and inspiration.
Two Design projects
The next two projects in the path encourage creators to practise the skills they learned in the previous ‘Explore’ projects, and to express themselves creatively while they grow in independence.
The revamped Get ideas task on the first step of each Design project now has a featured community project that will be regularly updated. You may also notice that the inspirational examples have been reordered or changed using analysis from interactions with them.
Additional community submissions can be found in the Share and play steps to provide upgrade ideas and creators are encouraged to look at remixes of the starter project for even more inspiration.
Interacting with remixes of the Silly eyes project is one of our favourite things to do! The project involves creating a character whose eyes follow the mouse pointer. We love seeing how design decisions have shaped each project and how various upgrades have been used.
For this project, we decided to remove the ‘Add stage effects’ step as it was largely a repeat of the earlier ‘Add sprite effects’ step. Stage effects is now an optional upgrade which means creators can get through to the ‘Share and play’ step to look at the design decisions made by others, then use those to choose which ideas to include in their project.
This project consists of creating an animation of a story. We looked at the remixes so far and realised the main steps of the surprise animations were:
Create your scene
Show curiosity
Add a surprise
Sometimes projects had a reaction in them but others relied on creating a reaction in the user watching the animation. With this in mind we moved the Reaction step and added it as an optional upgrade. We also added graphics to each step to explain the step position in the animation timeline.
A new option to remix one of the example projects was added to this project as a starting point if creators were short of time, needed help with ideas, or had perhaps already thought of an extension to the example animations.
One Invent project
Our final project in the path is where creators use their skills to meet a project brief for a particular audience.
The project brief has been revamped to make it more concise with the Reflection step becoming a checklist to keep track of how the project is meeting the brief.
This project consists of creating a book with multiple pages to tell a story or share facts. The major change to this project is a reorganisation of the steps. The original planning step has now split in two — the first step to decide the high-level purpose and audience for the book and the second step to plan the book in more detail using either the starter Scratch project or our new planning sheet.
Creators can use the new planning sheet to sketch their ideas on paper
The build and test step has also been restructured to break up the skills into categories and make the tasks clearer. At the end of the step, creators are encouraged to ask for feedback then repeat the process to work on their book until it is ready to share.
What next?
We will start refreshing another path soon but in the meantime, we hope you and your creators enjoy using the revamped Introduction to Scratch path. We would love to hear your feedback on any of our projects via the feedback button on the bottom of each project page.
We look forward to seeing what your creators make.
Launched in 2013, Hour of Code is an initiative to introduce young people to computer science using fun one-hour tutorials. To date, over 100 million young people have completed an hour of code with it.
Although the Hour of Code website is accessible all year round, every December for Computer Science Education Week people worldwide run their own Hour of Code events. Each year we love seeing many Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and young people at home across the community complete their Hour of Code. You can register your 2022 Hour of Code event now to run between 5 and 11 December.
To support your event, we have pulled together a bumper set of our free coding projects, which can each be completed in just one hour. You will find these activities on the Hour of Code website.
There’s something for all ages and levels of experience, so put an hour aside and help young people make something fabulous with code:
Ages 7–11
Beginner
For younger creators new to coding, a Scratch project is a great place to start.
With our Space talk project, they can create a space scene with characters that ‘emote’ to share their thoughts or feelings using sounds, colours, and actions. Creators program the character emotes using Scratch blocks to control graphic effects, costume animation, and sound effects.
Alternatively, our Stress ball project lets them code an onscreen stress ball that reacts to user clicks. Creators use the Paint and Sound editors in Scratch to personalise a clickable stress ball, and they add Scratch blocks to control graphic effects, costume animation, and sound effects.
We love this fun stress ball example sent to us recently by young creator April from the United States:
Another great option is to use Code Club World, which is a free tool to help children who are new to coding.
Creators can develop a character avatar, design a T-shirt, make some music, and more.
Comfortable
For 7- to 11-year-olds who are more comfortable with block-based coding, our project Broadcasting spells is ideal to choose. With the project, they connect Scratch blocks to code a wand that casts spells turning sprites into toads, and growing and shrinking them. Creators use broadcast blocks to transform multiple sprites at once, and they create sound effects with the Sound editor in Scratch.
Ages 11–14
Beginner
We have three exciting projects for trying text-based coding during Hour of Code in this category. The first, Anime expressions, is one of our brand-new ‘Introduction to web development’ projects. With this project, young people create a responsive webpage with text and images for an anime drawing tutorial. They write HTML to structure the webpage and CSS styles to apply layout, colour palettes, and fonts.
For a great introduction to coding with Python, we have the project Hello world from our ‘Introduction to Python’ path. With this project, creators write Python text-based code to create an interactive program that shows text and emojis based on user input. They learn about variables as they use them to store text and numbers, and they learn about writing functions to organise code and do calculations, retrieve the current date and time, and make a customisable dice.
LED firefly is a fantastic physical making project in which young people use a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and basic electronic components to create a blinking LED firefly. They program the LED’s light patterns with MicroPython code and activate it via a switch they make themselves using jumper wires.
Comfortable
For 11- to 14-year-olds who are already comfortable with HTML, the Flip treat webcards project is a fun option. With this, they create a webpage showing a set of cards that flip when a visitor’s mouse pointer hovers over them. Creators use CSS styling and animations to add interactivity, then they customise the cards with fancy fonts and colour gradients.
Young people who have already done some Python coding can try out our project Target practice. With this project they create a game, using the p5 graphics library to draw a colourful target, and writing code so that the player scores points by hitting the target’s rings with arrows. While they create the project, they learn about RGB colours, shape positioning with x and y coordinates, and decisions using if, else-if, and else code statements.
Ages 14+
Beginner
Our project Charting champions is a great introduction to data visualisation and analysis for coders aged 15 and older. With the project, they will discover the power of the Python programming language as they store Olympic medal data in lists and use the pygal library to create an interactive chart.
Comfortable
Teenage coders who feel comfortable with Python programming can use our project Solar system simulator to code an animated, interactive solar system model using the Python p5 graphics library. Their model will be interactive, as they’ll use dictionaries to store planet facts that display when a user clicks on an orbiting planet.
Coding for Hour of Code and beyond
Now is the time to register your Hour of Code event, then decide which project you’d like to support young people to create. You can download certificates for each of the creators from the Hour of Code certificates page.
And make sure to check out our project paths so you know what projects you can help the young people you support to code beyond this one hour of code.
We don’t just create activities so that other people can experience coding and digital making — we also get involved ourselves!
Recently, our teams who support the Code Club and CoderDojo networks got together to make LED fireflies. We are excited to get coding again as part of Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week.
Hello World, our free magazine for computing and digital making educators, has just published its second special edition: The Big Book of Computing Content.
A special edition on the content we teach in the Computing classroom
While Hello World‘s first special edition, The Big Book of Computing Pedagogy, focused on how we can teach Computing, this new book is about what we mean by Computing. It aims to demonstrate the breadth of knowledge and skills contained within this constantly evolving subject.
The 11 strands of Computing content in our taxonomy.
Our Computing taxonomy comprises eleven strands and aims to categorise Computing conceptual knowledge and skills to both demonstrate the breadth of Computing as a discipline, and to provide a common language to describe the different areas of study and competencies.
The Big Book of Computing Content complements our first Hello World special edition and follows the same principle of introducing readers to up-to-date research, followed by our favourite stories from past Hello World issues by educators who put that content into practice. For each of the eleven strands in our taxonomy, we also present a table of learning outcomes, which provides examples of knowledge and skills that learners from ages 5 to 19 could develop at each stage of their formal computing education.
Your thoughts on The Big Book of Computing Content
Hello World’s first special edition was very popular around the world, with educators setting up Big Book of Computing Pedagogy reading groups, leaders using the book to support pre-service teachers, and even of an upcoming translation into Thai.
We’ve already started to hear similar stories about The Big Book of Computing Content from Hello World readers, including CSEdResearch dedicating their Computer Science Education Discussion Group to all things Big Book of Computing Content in its first week of publication.
We’d love to hear from more educators about how you are using this new special edition, and how it complements your reading of the first Big Book.
You can also subscribe now to get each new Hello World — whether regular issue or special edition — straight to your digital inbox, for free! And if you’re based in the UK and do paid or voluntary work in education, you can subscribe for free print issues.
PS Have you listened to our Hello World podcast yet? Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Coding, or computer programming, is a way of writing instructions so that computers can complete tasks. Those instructions can be as simple as ‘move a toy robot forwards for three seconds and then make a beep’, or more complicated instructions, such as ‘check the weather in my local area and then adjust the heating in my house accordingly’.
Why should kids learn to code?
Even if your child never writes computer programs, it is likely they already use software that coders have created, and in the future they may work with, manage, or hire people who write code. This is why it is important that everyone has an understanding of what coding is all about, and why we at the Raspberry Pi Foundation are passionate about inspiring and supporting children to learn to code for free.
When young people are given opportunities to create with code, they can do incredible things — from expressing themselves, to addressing real-world issues, to trying out the newest technologies. Learning to code also helps them develop resilience and problem-solving skills.
But at what age should you start your child on their journey to learn about coding? Is there a too young age? Will they miss out on opportunities if they start too late?
No matter at what age you introduce children to coding, one key element is empowering them to create things that are relevant to them. Above all else, coding should be a fun activity for kids.
Learning programming
You might be surprised how young you can start children on their coding adventure. My own child started to learn when they were about six years old. And you can never be too old to learn to code. I didn’t start learning to program until I was in my late thirties, and I know many learners who decided to take up coding after their retirement.
Acquiring new skills and knowledge is often best accomplished when you are young. Learning a programming language is a little like learning a new spoken or written language. There are strict rules, special words to be used in specific orders and in different contexts, and even different ways of thinking depending on the languages you already know.
When people first introduced computer programming into the world, there were big barriers to entry. People had to pay thousands of dollars for a computer and program it using punch cards. It was very unlikely that any child had access to the money or the skills required to create computer programs. Today’s world is very different, with computers costing as little as $35, companies creating tools and toys aimed at coding for children, and organisations such as ours, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and our children’s coding club networks Code Club and CoderDojo, that have the mission to introduce children to the world of coding for free.
Getting hands-on with coding
By the age of about four, a child is likely to have the motor skills and understanding to begin to interact with simple toys that introduce the very basics of coding. Bee-Bot and Cubelets are both excellent examples of child-friendly toy robots that can be programmed.
Bee-Bot is a small floor robot that children program by pressing simple combinations of direction buttons so that it moves following the instructions provided. This is a great way of introducing children to the concept of sequencing. Sequencing is the way computers follow instructions one after the other, executing each command in turn.
Cubelets can be used to introduce physical computing to children. With Cubelets, children can snap together physical blocks to create their own unique robots. These robots will perform actions such as moving or lighting up, depending on their surroundings, such as the distance your hand is from the robot or the brightness of light in the room. These are a good example of teaching how inputs to a program can affect the outputs — another key concept in coding.
Visual programming
As your child gets older and becomes more used to using technology, and their eye-hand coordination improves, they might want to try out tools for visual programming. They can use free online programming platforms, such as ScratchJr on a tablet or phone or Scratch or Code Club World in a computer’s web browser. To learn more about these visual programming tools and what your child can create with them, read our blog post How do I start my child coding.
Children can begin to explore Scratch or Code Club World from about the age of six, although it is important to understand that all young people develop at different speeds. We offer many free resources to help learners get started with visual, block-based programming languages, and the easiest places to start are our Introduction to Scratch path and the home island on Code Club World. Children and adults of all ages can learn a lot from Scratch, develop their own engaging activities, and most importantly, have fun doing so.
Text-based coding
At around the ages of nine or ten, children’s typing skills are often sufficient for them to start using text-based languages. Again, it is important that they are allowed to have fun and express themselves, especially if they are moving on from Scratch. Our Introduction to Python path allows children to continue creating graphics while they program, as they are used to doing in Scratch; our Introduction to Web path will let them build their own simple websites to allow them to express their creative selves.
Picture: Conor McCabe Photography
There is no correct age to start learning
In my time at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, I have taught children as young as five and adults as old as seventy. There is no correct age at which a child can begin coding, and there are opportunities to begin at almost any age. The key to introducing coding to anyone is to make it engaging, relevant, and most of all fun!
With our new free ‘Introduction to web development’ path, young people are able to learn HTML and create their own webpages on topics that matter to them. The path is made up of six projects that show children and teenagers how to structure pages using HTML, and style them using CSS.
With all the website tools available today, why learn HTML?
Webpage creation has come a long way since the 1990s, but HTML is still the markup language that is used to display almost every page on the World Wide Web. By knowing how it works, you can deepen your understanding of the technology you use every day.
If you want to build your own website today, there are many tools to get you quickly up and running. These tools often involve dragging and dropping predefined elements and choosing from a wide collection of themed looks. Learning HTML and CSS skills is important for web designers, developers, and content creators who want to build unique webpage designs that make their content stand out.
The path helps young people express themselves through their own webpages
With our new ‘Introduction to web development’ path, we want creators (the young people who use our projects) to be able to quickly make fantastic-looking websites that follow modern best practices, while they also learn how HTML and CSS work together to create a webpage. Creators write their own HTML to develop the content and structure of their webpages. And they customise our pre-built CSS style sheets to get their webpages to look like they imagine.
This really is a fun and unique approach to learning HTML and building a webpage, and we think young people will quickly engage with it. They start by finding out how to structure pages using HTML before applying CSS styles that bring their pages to life. Through the six projects, they build all the skills and independence they need to make webpages that matter to them.
Accessibility first
We believe that young people should find out about website accessibility right from the start of their learning journey. That’s why the path for learning HTML shows creators how they can make their websites accessible to all their users regardless of the users’ needs or digital devices.
That’s why our new path uses semantic HTML. Older HTML tutorials might show you how to structure a webpage using tags like <div> and <span>. In contrast, the meaning and purpose of tags in semantic HTML is very clear. For example:
<main> is used to tag the main content for the webpage
<footer> is used for content to be displayed in the footer
<blockquote> contains a quote and typically the author of the quote
<section> contains a portion of content that usually sits within the main part of the webpage
Semantic HTML supports accessibility because it allows people who use a screen reader to more easily navigate a webpage and read it in a logical way.
Another element of accessible design that the path introduces is the colour combinations used on webpages. It is really important that contrasting colours are used for the background and the text. High contrast makes the text more readable, which means the webpage is more suitable for visually impaired users.
It’s very important to use contrasting colours on a webpage
The path also shows creators the importance of adding meaningful alternative text for images. Good alternative text helps visually impaired users, and users who have a very low bandwidth and therefore turn images off in their web browser.
With the path, young people will learn how to design webpages that respond to the device of the user
Finally, our path for learning HTML introduces creators to the concept of responsive web design. Responsive design is helpful because websites can be viewed on thousands of different devices. Some people view pages on large, high-resolution monitors, and others view them on a mobile phone screen. We show learners how they can use HTML and CSS to make their pages responsive so they display in the way that works best for the specific screen on which a user is viewing them.
Key questions answered
Who is the ‘Intro to web development’ path for?
We have written the projects in this path with young people of around the age from 9 to 17 in mind.
HTML and CSS are text-based markup languages. This means a young person who wants to start learning HTML needs to be familiar with typing on a keyboard. It would also be helpful to have experience of using the copy and paste function, which is useful when changing the layout of a page or copying similar pieces of code.
If a young person is unsure whether they have the right skills to get started with the path, they can first try out a short ‘Discover’ project. With this Discover project, young people can choose between the themes ‘space’, ‘sunsets’, ‘forests’, or ‘animals’ to see how they can create their first webpage in just five steps. (We’re still working on the ‘Discover’ project type, so if you have any feedback about it, let us know.)
Young people can experiment with our Discover project to build their own webpage in just a few steps
What will young people learn with the path?
Creators will learn how to use HTML and CSS to build webpages that have:
Images
Lists
Quotes
Links
Animations
Imported fonts
They will also learn about how to make their webpages accessible to all through use of:
Semantic HTML
Alternative text for images
Colour contrast checking
Responsive design (means the webpage adapts to the device on which it is viewed)
How long does the path take to complete?
We’ve designed the path so young people can complete it in six one-hour sessions, with one hour for each project. Since the project instructions encourage creators to upgrade their projects, they may wish to go further and spend a little more time getting their projects exactly as they imagine them.
What software is needed to create the projects in the path?
Young people only need a standard web browser to follow the project instructions and use an online code editor to create their webpages.
There are 28 other step-by-step projects for creators to choose from on our website. They can browse through these to see what cool things they’d like to make and what new skills they want to learn.
Build a webpage for Coolest Projects
If your kid is proud of the webpage they create with the final ‘Invent’ project in the path, they can share it with a worldwide community of young creators in our free Coolest Projects tech showcase. Project registration will open again in spring 2023. You can sign up to hear news about the showcase on the Coolest Projects homepage.
Details about the projects in ‘Intro to web development’
In the ‘Anime expressions’ project, creators build and style a webpage for an anime drawing tutorial. They learn how to use HTML tags to structure a webpage; use CSS to apply layout, colours, and fonts; and add images and text content to their page.
Explore project 2: Top 5 emojis
With the ‘Top 5 emojis’ project, young people create a webpage displaying their top 5 list of emojis. They learn how to add emojis, create a list, use a block quote, and animate elements of the page.
Explore project 3: Flip treat webcards
With the ‘Flip treat webcards’ project, creators make a webpage showing a flip card with a treat from around the world. They use CSS to make the card flip over when a user interacts with it. Creators also learn how to apply gradients and import fonts from Google Fonts.
Design project 1: Mood board
This Design project gives creators the chance to develop the skills that they have learned in the three ‘Explore’ projects. With the ‘Mood board’ project, young people create a webpage to display a mood board for a real or imaginary project. The mood board could, for example, show ideas for a party, a fashion item, a redesign of their bedroom, or a website; or it could show reminders of all the things that make them happy.
Design project 2: Sell me something
The ‘Sell me something’ project is another chance for creators to practise the skills that they have gained in the ‘Explore’ projects. They create a webpage to ‘sell something’ to the webpages visitors. It could be anything they like, from an object they love, to a game they like to play.
Invent project: Build a webpage
The ‘Build a webpage’ project is the final project in the path and allows young people to independently build a webpage on any topic they’re interested in. This Invent project offers info cards to remind creators of the key skills they’ve learned with the path, and a light structure to support them through the process of making their webpage. Young people are encouraged to showcase their final webpages in the path gallery to inspire other creators.
To find out what works in non-formal computing learning, we’ve conducted two research projects recently: a systematic literature review, and a set of two interventions that were applied and evaluated as part of our Gender Balance in Computing programme. In this blog, we outline these two research projects.
What is non-formal learning?
When you think of young people learning computing, do you think of schools, classrooms, and curricula? You’d be right that lots of computing education for young people takes place in classrooms as part of national curricula. However, a lot of learning can take place outside of formal schooling. When we talk about non-formal computing education, we mean structured or semi-structured learning environments such as clubs or community groups, often set up by volunteers. These may take place in a school, library, or community venue; but we’ve also heard of some of our communities running non-formal learning activities on buses, in fire stations, or at football grounds — there really is no limit to where learning can happen.
CoderDojos are community-based coding clubs and some take place in offices.
It’s harder to assess the impact and effectiveness of non-formal computing activities than formal computing education: we have to think outside of the traditional measures such as grades and formal exams or assessments. Instead, we estimate outcomes according to measures such as level of participant engagement, attendance, attrition rates, and changes in participants’ attitudes towards computing. We have previously also piloted non-formal assessments such as quizzes and found that these were well-received by adult facilitators and children alike.
Project 1: Researching the impact of non-formal computing education
Earlier this year, we conducted a systematic literature review into computing education for K–12 learners in non-formal settings. We identified 88 relevant research studies, which we read, compared, and synthesised to provide an overview of what is already known about the effectiveness of non-formal computing activities and to identify opportunities for further research.
Our analysis looked for common themes within existing studies and suggested some benefits that non-formal learning offers, including:
Access to advanced and innovative topics
Awareness about computing careers
The chance to personalise projects according to learner interests
The opportunity for learners to progress at their own pace
The chance for learners to develop a sense of community through peers and role models
We presented this research at an international computing education conference called ICER 2022, and you can read about it in our open-access paper in the ICER conference proceedings.
Project 2: Making links between non-formal learning and formal computing study skills
One particularly interesting characteristic of non-formal learning is that it tends to attract a broader range of learners than formal computing lessons. For example, a 2019 survey found that about 40% of the young people who attend Code Clubs were female. This is a high percentage compared with the proportion of girls among the learners choosing Computer Science GCSE in England, which is currently around 20%. We believe this points to an opportunity to capitalise on girls’ interest in learning activities outside of the classroom, and we hope to use non-formal activities to encourage more girls to take an interest in formal computer science education.
Code Clubs are well-attended by girls.
As part of our Gender Balance in Computing research programme in England, we worked with Apps for Good and the Behavioual Insights Team (BIT) to run two interventions in school-based non-formal settings, for which we adapted non-formal resources and used behavioural science concepts to strengthen the links the resources make between non-formal learning and studying computing more formally. One intervention ran in secondary schools for learners aged 13–14 years old, who used an adapted Apps for Good course, and the other ran in primary school for learners aged 8–11 year olds, who took part in Code Clubs using adapted versions of our projects.
The interventions were evaluated independently by a separate team from BIT, based on data from surveys completed by learners before and after the interventions, and interviews with teachers and learners. This data was analysed by the independent team to explore the impact the interventions had on learners’ attitudes towards computing and intention to study the subject in the future.
What did we learn from these research projects?
Our literature review concluded that future research in this area would benefit from experimenting with a variety of approaches to designing, and measuring the impact of, computing activities in a non-formal setting. For example, this could include comparing the short-term and long-term impact of specific interventions, aiming to cater for different types of participants, and offering different types of learning experiences.
In these two Gender Balance in Computing interventions, there was limited statistical evidence of an improvement in participants’ attitude towards computing or in their stated intention to study computer programming in the future. The independent evaluators recommended that the learning content that was created for the interventions could be adapted further to make the link between non-formal and formal learning even more salient. On the other hand, as is often the case with research, some interesting themes — ones that we weren’t looking for — emerged from the data, including:
In the secondary school intervention, there was a small, positive change in girls’ attitudes toward computing when they saw that it was relevant to real-world problems
In the primary school intervention, some teachers also reported an increased confidence to pursue computing among girls who had used the adapted Code Club resources, and they highlighted the importance of positive female role models in computing
In both projects, the findings suggest that it is beneficial for learners to participate in non-formal learning activities that link to real-world situations, and that this could be particularly beneficial for girls to help them see computing as a subject that is relevant to their own interests and goals. Another common theme in both projects is that non-formal learning activities play an important role in showing what a “computer person” looks like and who belongs in computing. This suggests there’s a need for a diverse range of volunteers to run non-formal computing activities, and that we should make sure that non-formal learning resources include representations of a diverse range of learners.
Undertaking these research projects has provided evidence that the work the Foundation does is on the right track and suggested opportunities to use these themes in our future non-formal work and resources.
Find out more about our work on non-formal computing education
More information about research projects at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and our newly launched Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre can be found on our research pages and on the Research Centre’s website.
If you’re new to teaching programming or looking to build or refresh your programming knowledge, we have a free resource that is perfect for you. Our ‘Learn to program in Python’ online course pathway is for educators who want to develop their understanding of the text-based language Python. Each course is packed with information and activities to help you apply what you learn in your classroom teaching.
Why learn to program in Python?
Writing a program in Python is very similar to writing in English, which makes starting to program much easier. Python is also a general-purpose programming language, so once you’ve learned the basics, you can use Python for lots of different programming activities.
That’s why Python is a perfect choice for learning to program, and why many of our educational resources involve Python. Our seven online Python courses cover aspects from taking your first steps into programming, to writing a program to control an electronic circuit, to learning about object-oriented programming.
With time and practice, you will be able to use Python programming to create unique solutions to problems, build helpful tools, and make things that are important to you.
How does the Python course pathway work?
The courses in the pathway have been written by our educators and include advice and activities to help you teach programming in your classroom. You can reuse the course activities to explain programming concepts to your learners and get them to write programs themselves. Because you will have first-hand experience of the activities, you’ll be able to anticipate your learners’ difficulties and adapt your lessons to suit them.
All the courses are designed to take three or four weeks to complete, based on you spending two hours a week on participating. You can have free time-limited access to each course for the length of time it’s designed to take to complete. For example, if it’s a four-week course, like ‘Programming 101’, you can sign up for free to get four weeks of access.
The seven courses in the Python path can be completed in any order you like, and you can choose the courses that match your interests and needs.
Each course involves activities that help you create a programming project using the concepts that you’re learning about. These activities are designed to be a fun and interactive way to reinforce what you’ve learned and can also be used with your learners in the classroom.
Course spotlight: Programming 101
If programming is completely new to you, our ‘Programming 101’ course is the best place to start. In ‘Programming 101’, we use this definition of programming to start with the idea that programming is about you telling a computer what to do:
“Programming is how you get computers to solve problems.”
We see programming as a chance to think creatively about a problem and about all the different ways it could be solved. While you might be unfamiliar with terms like programming, algorithms, or selection, the ‘Programming 101’ course demonstrates how they touch on things that many of us know from other areas of our lives.
On the course, you will:
Learn about basic programming concepts such as sequencing and repetition
Start to write your own programs
Discover how to interpret error messages to find and fix mistakes in your programs
What will you make in the courses?
Through building an understanding of programming, you will see how you can write your own programs to make games, quizzes, physical computing projects, and more. Here’s look at some of the things you could make in three of the seven courses:
Programming 101: Write your first program in Python to make a personal assistant bot. You’ll discover how to make the output of your program respond to the user’s input.
You’ll write a program to create personal assistant bot in the ‘Programming 101’ course for beginners.
Programming with GUIs: Build a game where players compare two sets of emoji to find the emoji that matches. To make this game, you’ll use what you learn in the course to design the layout of a graphic user interface (GUI) and make sure only one emoji appears twice.
You’ll make an interactive graphic game in the ‘Programming with GUIs’ course.
Object-oriented Programming: Create a text-based adventure game with a character on a quest through different rooms! You’ll discover how to write a program that reacts to user input, and how to write your own code to create more challenges within the game based on your ideas.
If you want to help your learners develop their understanding of programming in Python, you’ll be interested in these free resources we’ve created for young people:
Introduction to Python: Our guided project path for learners who are new to text-based programming. We have created these projects with young people around the age of 9 to 13 in mind. Each project takes one hour to complete, and learners can make their own fun programs while learning about Python.
More Python: Our guided project path for learners who want to move beyond the ‘Intro to Python’ path to write programs that contain charts, artwork, and more. We’ve written these projects for young people around the age of 10 to 13.
Isaac Computer Science: This learning platform we’ve created for GCSE and A level students (age 14 to 18) uses Python and other text-based languages to teach the programming concepts within England’s computer science curriculum.
Conrad has been an influential figure in the areas of AI, data science, and computation for over 30 years. The company he co-founded, Wolfram Research, develops computational technologies including the Wolfram programming language, which is used by the Mathematica and WolframAlpha programs. In the seminar, Conrad spoke about his work on developing a mathematics curriculum “for the AI age”.
Computation is everywhere
In his talk, Conrad began by talking about the ubiquity of computation. He explained how computation (i.e. an operation that follows conditions to give a defined output) has transformed our everyday lives and led to the development of entire new sub-disciplines, such as computational medicine, computational marketing, and even computational agriculture. He then used the WolframAlpha tool to give several practical examples of applying high-level computation to problem-solving in different areas.
Yes, there are more people in the UK than sheep in New Zealand.
The power of computation for mathematics
Conrad then turned his attention to the main question of his talk: if computation has also changed real-world mathematics, how should school-based mathematics teaching respond? He suggested that, as computation has impacted all aspects of our daily lives, school subjects should be reformed to better prepare students for the careers of the future.
Hand calculation methods are time-consuming.
His biggest criticism was the use of hand calculation methods in mathematics teaching. He proposed that a mathematics curriculum that “assumes computers exist” and uses computers (rather than humans) to compute answers would better support students to develop a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and principles. In other words, if students spent less time doing hand-calculation methods, they could devote more time to more complex problems.
What does computational problem-solving look like?
One interesting aspect of Conrad’s talk was how he modelled the process of solving problems using computation. In all of the example problems, he outlined that computational problem-solving follows the same four-step process:
Define the question: Students think about the scope and details of the problem and define answerable questions to tackle.
Abstract to computable form: Using the information provided, students translate the question into a precise abstract form, such as a diagram or algorithm, so that it can be solved by a computer-based agent.
Computer answers: Using the power of computation, students solve the abstract question and resolve any issues during the computation process.
Interpret results: Students reinterpret and recontextualise the abstract answer to derive useful results. If problems emerge, students refine or fix their work.
Depending on the problem, the process can be repeated multiple times until the desired solution is reached. Rather than being proposed as a static list of outcomes, the process was presented by Conrad as an iterative cycle than resembles an “ascending helix”:
The problem-solving ‘helix’ model.
A curriculum for a world with AI
In the later stages of his talk, Conrad talked about the development of a new computational curriculum to better define what a modern mathematics curriculum might look like. The platform that hosts the curriculum, named Computer-Based Math (or CBM), outlines the need to integrate computational thinking into mathematics in schools. For instance, one of the modules, How Fast Could I Cycle Stage 7 Of The An Post Rás?, asks students to develop a computational solution to a real-world problem. Following the four-step problem-solving process, students apply mathematical models, computational tools, and real-world data to generate a valid solution:
Sample module from Computer-Based Math. Click to enlarge.
Some future challenges he remarked on included how a computer-based mathematics curriculum could be integrated with existing curricula or qualifications, at what ages computational mathematics should be taught, and what assessment, training, and hardware would be needed to support teachers to deliver such a curriculum.
Conrad concluded the talk by arguing that the current need for computational literacy is similar to the need for mass literacy and pondering whether the UK could lead the push towards a new computational curriculum suitable for learners who grow up with AI technologies. This point provided food for thought during our discussion section, especially for teachers interested in embedding computation into their lessons, and for researchers thinking about the impact of AI in different fields. We’re grateful to Conrad for speaking about his work and mission — long may it continue!
You can catch up on Conrad’s talk with his slides and the talk’s recording:
You can also explore Wolfram Research’s Computer-Based Maths curriculum, which offers learning materials to help teachers embed computation in their maths lessons.
Finally, try out Wolfram’s tools to solve everyday problems using computation. For example, you might ask WolframAlpha data-rich questions, which the tool converts from text input into a computable problem using natural language processing. (Two of my favourite example questions are: “How old was Leonardo when the Mona Lisa was painted?” and “What was the weather like when I was born?”)
Join our next seminar
In the final seminar of our series on cross-curricular computing, we welcome Dr Tracy Gardner and Rebecca Franks (Raspberry Pi Foundation) to present their ongoing work on computing education in non-formal settings. Sign up now to join us for this session on Tues 8 November:
We will shortly be announcing the theme of a brand-new series of research seminars starting in January 2023. The seminars will take place online on the first Tuesday of the month at 17:00–18:30 UK time.
We’re sharing the fourth evaluation report on projects in our Gender Balance in Computing research programme today. This is a programme we’ve been running, with partner organisations, as part of the National Centre for Computing Education, funded by the Department for Education in England. The programme’s overall goal is to identify ways to encourage more young women to study Computer Science.
Like the previous reports on our Storytelling, Pair Programming, and Peer Instruction projects, this new report was compiled by independent evaluators from the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). It concerns a study conducted with learners aged 9 to 10 and examining two approaches aimed at improving girls’ sense of belonging in computing.
The importance of belonging in computing
A growing body of research suggests that girls’ interest and motivation is linked to the sense of belonging that they feel when experiencing and studying STEM subjects. When girls see themselves represented in computing by identifying role models, they are more likely to value the subject in their studies and future careers. Parents and wider family members also play an important role in amplifying the message that girls belong in computing through the way that they talk about the subject.
The Belonging study was structured as two distinct but related interventions designed to improve girls’ sense of belonging, each following a different approach. WISE and a team at BIT (separate to the team evaluating the study) were responsible for the design, delivery, and implementation of the two interventions, while we provided overall programme management and recruited schools.
Interventions to encourage girls’ sense of belonging
This study was conducted from September 2021 to February 2022 as a randomised controlled trial (RCT) where participating schools were randomly divided into three groups: two treatment groups which each delivered one of the two interventions to their Year 5 learners, and one control group, which taught Computing to their Year 5 learners in their usual way throughout the duration of the study.
The intervention designed by WISE was titled ‘My Skills My Life’ and was aimed at girls’ self-identification. The design included ten lessons that highlighted the importance of computing and STEM and how these fields impact our lives. The lessons also introduced pupils to female role models working in professions relating closely to computing.
A word search activity from the My Skills My Life lesson titled ‘My Dream Job’. The purpose of this activity was to introduce a variety of STEM and computing careers.
A core component was a lesson midway through the intervention, where schools in the treatment group held a ‘real-life role model’ session with female role models from the computing industry. In this session, volunteer role models shared their day-to-day work experiences and discussed some fundamental concepts and perceptions related to their role. To do so, the role models first received support and training from the schools based on material provided by WISE. WISE also provided additional training and guidance on resource usage and how to talk about computing careers to make them more understandable and relatable to children.
In addition to the lesson content and training, WISE created a role model booklet with information on 72 women currently working in computing and associated industries. These women had volunteered to be included in the booklet and to also speak to pupils potentially interested in computing. The main purpose of presenting these role-models was to let the primary pupils meet women who are happy and successful in computing careers.
“I loved learning about [role model name]’s job during the day. It was so cool.”
– Primary school pupil (report, p. 50)
The other intervention in the trial, designed by BIT, was called ‘Code Stars’. This intervention ran over 12 weeks. Schools involved in it first delivered a stand-alone, one-off lesson on artificial intelligence (AI).
A slide from the AI-themed lesson from the Code Stars intervention.
After the lesson, the pupils completed a homework task, engaging with their parents or carers. This was followed by a set of regular conversation prompts to encourage parents to have discussions with their children about computing in general and the AI lesson in particular. The original plan was for BIT to implement these conversation prompts, but due to COVID-19-related challenges, teachers had to take the responsibility of sending the prompts. At the end of the intervention, teachers conducted a follow-up lesson.
“Some parents did not want to support their children due to their own lack of confidence. Others did not see it as important as doing the weekly Maths and English homework.”
– Teacher participating in the Code Stars intervention (report, p. 55)
Results and recommendations from the intervention evaluations
These two separate but related approaches aimed at increasing girls’ sense of membership in the computing community and to improve their and their parents’ engagement. The overall impact was evaluated using a mixed method approach; this included case studies, online teacher surveys, parent interviews, pupil surveys, lesson observations, and pupil focus groups.
The impact evaluation did not find conclusive evidence of either intervention having an impact on female pupils’ attitudes towards computing or their intention to study computing in the future. However, the stated intention of girls to study computing was 5.6 percentage points higher in the Code Stars intervention group than in the control group. This difference was statistically significant in some, although not all, of the analysis run; this means we cannot rule out that this result was due to chance, rather than due to the intervention.
In addition, qualitative data collected from teachers suggested that the My Skills My Life intervention delivery was very well received and needed only minor adjustments, although this did not translate into evidence of impact on the measured pupil outcomes. Teachers also appreciated the level of detail in the My Skills My Life lesson plans, and the Code Stars intervention was described as fun and engaging.
The independent evaluators of this research study have recommended refinements to each of the interventions to improve their delivery and potential impact, along with suggested evaluation strategies for any future replications of the interventions.
Want to find out more about increasing girls’ sense of belonging in computing?
We are very grateful to all the schools, pupils, and teachers who took part in this project. If you would like to stay up-to-date with the Gender Balance in Computing programme, you can sign up to our newsletter. We will also share reports on the other projects within the programme that have explored:
The links between non-formal and formal Computing
The impact of using Computing to solve real-world problems
The role that GCSE Options booklets and Subject Choice evenings can play in promoting gender balance in computing
Supporting educators to provide high-quality computing education has always been integral to our mission. In 2018, we began creating more learning resources for formal education settings. The UK government had recently announced future investment in supporting computing educators. Schools in England were offering the national Computing curriculum established in 2014. (In the USA, a more common term for prescribed education content is ‘standards’.)
England’s Computing curriculum requires that all learners be taught the subject between ages 5 and 16, and it consists of only 25 statements outlining expectations for learners. To accompany this curriculum, we started developing a framework to help us describe the subject of Computing, and in particular the common threads running through it.
A 2012 report by the Royal Society presented the breadth of computing by dividing it into three areas: information technology, computer science, and digital literacy. Although this goes some way to describe computing as a discipline, in our view this model creates artificial divides between aspects of the subject according to whether they are seen as more or less technical. Our more holistic view of computing recognises that concepts and skills within the subject are far more interconnected.
Principles for our taxonomy
When we set out to develop our framework, the goal was to provide a way to look at and describe the subject of Computing as a set of interconnected topics; the framework doesn’t define standards or curricula. There are, of course, many ways of organising the subject matter, implemented through exam specifications, textbooks, schemes of learning, and various progression guides. For our framework, we reviewed examples of each of these, from England and beyond, and decided on some organisational principles:
Our framework should describe the whole of Computing, incorporating computer science, information technology, and digital literacy
The framework should be applicable across primary and secondary education, meaning it should be useful for categorising the knowledge encountered by all learners, from five-year-olds to our oldest secondary school students
While inspired by England’s national curriculum, the framework should be independent of any particular exam specification and capable of adaptation to new curricula
The framework should represent Computing as a discipline that combines a broad mixture of concepts and skills
Developing the taxonomy
Following these principles, we identified ten content themes, or strands, that thread through a learner’s journey in Computing education. We call this framework representing the knowledge and skills that make up the subject our Computing taxonomy. As the Foundation is part of the consortium that established the National Centre for Computing Education in England, our taxonomy became a cornerstone of the work of the Centre, providing a common language to describe Computing in English schools.
The 11 content strands we’ve identified for the subject of Computing.
Computing is, of course, a constantly evolving field and as such, our taxonomy evolves with it. Since 2018 we’ve iterated our taxonomy to incorporate new things we’ve learned, for example relating to the rapid developments of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in recent years. AI now is a significant area of study and represented as its own strand in our current taxonomy, bringing the number of strands up to eleven:
Effective use of tools
Safety and security
Design and development
Impact of technology
Computing systems
Networks
Creating media
Algorithms and data structures
Programming
Data and information
Artificial intelligence
Given the interconnected nature of Computing, we embrace a best-fit approach to content categorisation, choosing the most appropriate strand(s) for each idea. In developing our Computing taxonomy, we determined that four of the strands (the horizontal strands in the diagram) were best taught interwoven with the others, in context rather than as discrete topics. A good example of this is the strand ‘Safety and security’, which focuses on supporting learners to realise the benefits of digital technology without putting themselves and others at risk. While it would be possible to teach this strand as one discrete set of lessons, revisiting it throughout a learner’s journey provides regular reinforcement as well as grounding in the context of other strands.
Within the strands, we have also identified progressive learning outcomes for each stage of learning. These learning outcomes are illustrative of the kinds of knowledge and understanding that learners could develop in each area of Computing. They are not prescriptive and instead aim to illustrate the wide applications of the discipline.
Coming soon: The Big Book of Computing Content
On 24 October, we will publish The Big Book of Computing Content. Framed by our taxonomy, The Big Book of Computing Content presents our work so far in describing the diverse range of concepts and skills that comprise Computing. It also includes the illustrative learning outcomes we’ve identified.
The Big Book of Computing Content will be available in print and as a free PDF download; if you subscribe now, you’ll receive the PDF in your inbox on publication day.
Share your thoughts on our taxonomy
We hope our taxonomy and the new Big Book enable you to reflect on the breadth of Computing and resonate with your teaching. Please share your reflections, in the comments below or by tagging us on social media, if you’d like to help us develop the taxonomy further.
For our seminar series on cross-disciplinary computing, it was a delight to host Genevieve Smith-Nunes this September. Her research work involving ballet and augmented reality was a perfect fit for our theme.
Genevieve Smith-Nunes
Genevieve has a background in classical ballet and was also a computing teacher for several years before starting Ready Salted Code, an educational initiative around data-driven dance. She is now coming to the end of her doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge, in which she focuses on raising awareness of data ethics using ballet and brainwave data as narrative tools, working with student Computing teachers.
Why dance and computing?
You may be surprised that there are links between dance, particularly ballet, and computing. Genevieve explained that classical ballet has a strict repetitive routine, using rule-based choreography and algorithms. Her work on data-driven dance had started at the time of the announcement of the new Computing curriculum in England, when she realised the lack of gender balance in her computing classroom. As an expert in both ballet and computing, she was driven by a desire to share the more creative elements of computing with her learners.
Two of Genevieve’s data-driven ballet dances: [arra]stre and [PAIN]byte
Genevieve has been working with a technologist and a choreographer for several years to develop ballets that generate biometric data and include visualisation of such data — hence her term ‘data-driven dance’. This has led to her developing a second focus in her PhD work on how Computing students can discuss questions of ethics based on the kind of biometric and brainwave data that Genevieve is collecting in her research. Students need to learn about the ethical issues surrounding data as part of their Computing studies, and Genevieve has been working with student teachers to explore ways in which her research can be used to give examples of data ethics issues in the Computing curriculum.
Collecting data during dances
Throughout her talk, Genevieve described several examples of dances she had created. One example was [arra]stre, a project that involved a live performance of a dance, plus a series of workshops breaking down the computer science theory behind the performance, including data visualisation, wearable technology, and images triggered by the dancers’ data.
Much of Genevieve’s seminar was focused on the technologies used to capture movement data from the dancers and the challenges this involves. For example, some existing biometric tools don’t capture foot movement — which is crucial in dance — and also can’t capture movements when dancers are in the air. For some of Genevieve’s projects, dancers also wear headsets that allow collection of brainwave data.
Due to interruptions to her research design caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, much of Genevieve’s PhD research took place online via video calls. New tools had to be created to capture dance performances within a digital online setting. Her research uses webcams and mobile phones to record the biometric data of dancers at 60 frames per second. A number of processes are then followed to create a digital representation of the dance: isolating the dancer in the raw video; tracking the skeleton data; using post pose estimation machine learning algorithms; and using additional software to map the joints to the correct place and rotation.
Are your brainwaves personal data?
It’s clear from Genevieve’s research that she is collecting a lot of data from her research participants, particularly the dancers. The projects include collecting both biometric data and brainwave data. Ethical issues tied to brainwave data are part of the field of neuroethics, which comprises the ethical questions raised by our increasing understanding of the biology of the human brain.
Teaching learners to be mindful about how to work with personal data is at the core of the work that Genevieve is doing now. She mentioned that there are a number of ethics frameworks that can be used in this area, and highlighted the UK government’s Data Ethics Framework as being particularly straightforward with its three guiding principles of transparency, accountability, and fairness. Frameworks such as this can help to guide a classroom discussion around the security of the data, and whether the data can be used in discriminatory ways.
Brainwave data visualisation using the Emotiv software.
Data ethics provides lots of material for discussion in Computing classrooms. To exemplify this, Genevieve recorded her own brainwaves during dance, research, and rest activities, and then shared the data during workshops with student computing teachers. In our seminar Genevieve showed two visualisations of her own brainwave data (see the images above) and discussed how the student computing teachers in her workshops had felt that one was more “personal” than the other. The same brainwave data can be presented as a spreadsheet, or a moving graph, or an image. Student computing teachers felt that the graph data (shown above) felt more medical, and more like permanent personal data than the visualisation (shown above), but that the actual raw spreadsheet data felt the most personal and intrusive.
Watch the recording of Genevieve’s seminar to see her full talk:
Genevieve’s seminar used the title ME++, which refers to the data self and the human self: both are important and of equal value. Genevieve’s use of this term is inspired by William J. Mitchell’s book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Within his framing, the I in the digital world is more than the I of the physical world and highlights the posthuman boundary-blurring of the human and non-human.
In our final two seminars for this year we are exploring further aspects of cross-disciplinary computing. Just this week, Conrad Wolfram of Wolfram Technologies joined us to present his ideas on maths and a core computational curriculum. We will share a summary and recording of his talk soon.
On 2 November, Tracy Gardner and Rebecca Franks from our team will close out this series by presenting work we have been doing on computing education in non-formal settings. Sign up now to join us for this session:
I am delighted to announce a new collaboration between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and a leading AI company, DeepMind, to inspire the next generation of AI leaders.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission is to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. Our vision is that every young person — whatever their background — should have the opportunity to learn how to create and solve problems with computers.
With the rapid advances in artificial intelligence — from machine learning and robotics, to computer vision and natural language processing — it’s increasingly important that young people understand how AI is affecting their lives now and the role that it can play in their future.
Experience AI is a new collaboration between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and DeepMind that aims to help young people understand how AI works and how it is changing the world. We want to inspire young people about the careers in AI and help them understand how to access those opportunities, including through their subject choices.
Experience AI
More than anything, we want to make AI relevant and accessible to young people from all backgrounds, and to make sure that we engage young people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in AI careers.
The program has two strands: Inspire and Experiment.
Inspire: To engage and inspire students about AI and its impact on the world, we are developing a set of free learning resources and materials including lesson plans, assembly packs, videos, and webinars, alongside training and support for educators. This will include an introduction to the technologies that enable AI; how AI models are trained; how to frame problems for AI to solve; the societal and ethical implications of AI; and career opportunities. All of this will be designed around real-world and relatable applications of AI, engaging a wide range of diverse interests and useful to teachers from different subjects.
Experiment: Building on the excitement generated through Inspire, we are also designing an AI challenge that will support young people to experiment with AI technologies and explore how these can be used to solve real-world problems. This will provide an opportunity for students to get hands-on with technology and data, along with support for educators.
Our initial focus is learners aged 11 to 14 in the UK. We are working with teachers, students, and DeepMind engineers to ensure that the materials and learning experiences are engaging and accessible to all, and that they reflect the latest AI technologies and their application.
As with all of our work, we want to be research-led and the Raspberry Pi Foundation research team has been working over the past year to understand the latest research on what works in AI education.
Next steps
Development of the Inspire learning materials is underway now, and we will release the whole set of resources early in 2023. Throughout 2023, we will design and pilot the Experiment challenge.
If you want to stay up to date with Experience AI, or if you’d like to be involved in testing the materials, fill in this form to register your interest.
Inspire young people about coding and space science with Astro Pi Mission Zero. Mission Zero offers young people the chance to write code that will run in space! It opens for participants today.
What is Mission Zero?
In Mission Zero, young people write a simple computer program to run on an Astro Pi computer on board the International Space Station (ISS).
Following step-by-step instructions, they write code to take a reading from an Astro Pi sensor and display a colourful image for the ISS astronauts to see as they go about their daily tasks. This is a great, one-hour activity for beginners to programming.
The Astro Pi computers in microgravity on the International Space Station
Participation is free and open for young people up to age 19 in ESA Member States (eligibility details). Everything can be done in a web browser, on any computer with internet access. No special hardware or prior coding skills are needed.
Participants will receive a piece of space science history to keep: a personalised certificate they can download, which shows their Mission Zero program’s exact start and end time, and the position of the ISS when their program ran.
If you’ve been involved in Mission Zero before, you will notice lots of things have changed. This year’s Mission Zero participants will be the first to use our brand-new online code editor, a tool that makes it super easy to write their program using the Python language.
The new code editor where young people will write their Mission Zero programs using the Python language
Finally, this year we’re challenging coders to create a colourful image to show on the Astro Pi’s LED display, and to use the data from the colour sensor to determine the image’s background colour.
The theme to inspire images for Mission Zero 2022/23 is ‘flora and fauna’. The images participants design can represent any aspect of this theme, such as flowers, trees, animals, or insects. Young people could even choose to program a series of images to show a short animation during the 30 seconds their program will run.
Here are some examples of images created by last year’s Mission Zero participants. What will you create?
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with us here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Young people can also take part in Astro Pi Mission Space Lab, where they will work to design a real scientific experiment to run on the Astro Pi computers.
You can keep updated with all of the latest Astro Pi news by following the Astro Pi Twitter account or signing up to the newsletter at astro-pi.org.
In 2016, Code Club Australia launched the Moonhack online coding event and broke the world record for the most children coding in one day. Then in 2017 they broke the record again. By now, more than 150,000 young learners from 70 countries have participated in Moonhack.
Moonhack inspires young people to celebrate humans’ technological achievements through fun coding projects.
Moonhack is an online coding challenge for young learners and celebrates humans’ technological achievements. The 2022 event takes place from 10 to 23 October to coincide with World Space Week, and it features six brand-new projects that show how satellites can help us live more sustainably. We caught up with Kaye North, Community and Engagement Manager at Code Club Australia, to find out more.
What will this year’s Moonhack bring?
Kaye developed this year’s projects across Scratch, micro:bit, and Python to cater for learners with all levels of coding experience. One project was designed in collaboration with astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker from the Australian National University. Another project highlights that objects in the sky have been meaningful for humans since way before the advent of modern satellites. Kaye developed this project together with a community in the Torres Strait.
By coding a project in this year’s Moonhack, young people will learn about satellites.
“The Torres Strait is a unique part of Australia off the tip of Queensland,” Kaye told us. “It’s this amazing group of islands. As a teacher I taught there for three years and learned a lot about the community’s culture.” When a colleague suggested a project about Tagai — a constellation central to Torres Strait Islander culture — Kaye jumped at the chance to work with the island community again.
One of this year’s Moonhack projects teaches about Tagai, a constellation central to Torres Strait Islander culture.
Kaye initially intended to work with a Torres Strait elder, “but that really snowballed. I had two days at a Tagai school, where the cultural teacher shared his story about the Tagai constellation. I worked with a Year 6 class, coding and putting ideas together, creating this one amazing project. And as we were pulling it together, one of the girls said ‘We need to put our language into it, we should be able to speak in it.’ And that’s where the idea of having the kids’ voices in the project came from.”
What will young learners gain from taking part in Moonhack?
Moonhack 2021 had over 25,000 participants, and Kaye wants to share the Tagai project with as many people in 2022. When we asked her what else she hopes young people take away from Moonhack this year, she said:
“I hope that people really get the connection to satellites in space and how these are going to influence us fulfilling the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. I really hope that comes through. Big picture though? That the kids have fun.”
Moonhack 2022 runs from 10 to 23 October and is free and open to any young coder, whether they are part of a Code Club or not. The projects are already available in English, French, Dutch, and Greek. Arabic and Latin American Spanish versions are in preparation.
To take part with your young people, register on the Moonhack website.
Bebras a free, annual challenge that helps schools introduce computational thinking to their students. No programming is involved, and it’s completely free for schools to take part. All Bebras questions are self-marking. Schools can enter students from age 6 to 18 and know they’ll get interesting and challenging (but not too challenging) activities.
“This has been a really positive experience. Thank you. Shared results with head and Head of KS3. Really useful for me when assessing KS4 options.” – Secondary teacher, North Yorkshire
We’re making Bebras accessible by offering age-appropriate challenges for different school levels, and a challenge tailored for visually impaired students.
What is the idea behind Bebras?
We want young people to get excited about computing. Through Bebras, they will learn about computational and logical thinking by answering questions and solving puzzles.
Bebras questions are based on classic computing problems and presented in friendly, age-appropriate contexts. For example, an algorithm-based puzzle for learners aged 6 to 8 is presented in terms of a hungry tortoise find an efficient eating path across a lawn; for 16- to 18-year-olds, a difficult question based on graph theory asks students to sort out some quiz teams by linking quizzers who know each other.
Can you solve the example puzzle?
Here’s a question from the 2021 challenge for the Junior category (ages 10 to 12). You’ll find the correct answer at the bottom of this blog post.
Science Fair
Bebras High School is having a science fair.
All the events in the fair need to follow a specific order, and only one event can be held at a time.
The diagram below shows all the events that must be included in the flow of the science fair.
The arrows between events indicate that the event the arrow is drawn from has to occur before the event the arrow points to. For example, ‘Social Interaction’ can only happen after both ‘Opening Speeches’ and ‘Project Presentations’ have finished.
Question: What is the correct order of events for the science fair?
How do I get my school involved?
The Bebras challenge for UK schools takes place from 7 to 18 November. Register at bebras.uk/admin to get full access to the challenge.
By registering, you also get access to the back catalogue of questions, from which you can build your own quizzes to use in your school at any time during the year. All the quizzes are self-marking, and you can download your students’ results for your mark book. Schools have reported using the back catalogue of questions for end-of-term activities, lesson starters, and schemes of lessons about computational thinking.
The European Astro Pi Challenge is back for another year. This is young people’s chance to write computer programs that run on board the International Space Station.
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti with one of the upgraded Astro Pi computers on which young people’s programs will run.
Young people can take part in two Astro Pi challenges: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab. Participation is free and open for young people up to age 19 in ESA Member States (see more details about eligibility on the Astro Pi website). Young people can participate in one or both of the challenges.
Their programs will run on the two new upgraded Astro Pi computers, which launched into space in December 2021. The Astro Pis were named after the two inspirational European scientists Nikola Tesla and Marie Skłodowska-Curie by Mission Zero participants. For the 2021/22 European Astro Pi Challenge, these new computers ran over 17,000 programs written by young people from 26 countries.
Here is ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer getting the new Astro Pis ready for young people’s experiments.
You can register for Mission Space Lab from today
In Mission Space Lab, teams of young people work together with a mentor who supports them, as they design a scientific experiment to be run on the Astro Pis in space.
Teams write programs that use an Astro Pi’s sensors and camera to collect data from the International Space Station, which the teams then analyse. This video has more information about the Astro Pi computers and how teams can choose an experiment idea:
Registration for Mission Space Lab is now open, and participation takes place over eight months. Mentors need to register their team and submit the team’s experiment idea by 28 October 2022. For more details on how to register, visit the Mission Space Lab webpages.
Mission Zero is the beginners’ challenge where young people write a simple program and get a taste of space science.
All eligible programs that follow the official guidelines will run in space for up to 30 seconds. The young people who participate receive a certificate they can download which shows their program’s exact start and end time, and the position of the ISS when their program ran — a piece of space science history to keep!
Mission Zero opens on 22 September 2022. Watch this space for more details on launch day.
Stay up to date
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with us here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
You can stay up to date with all of the latest Astro Pi news by following the Astro Pi Twitter account or signing up to the newsletter at astro-pi.org
The summer months are an exciting time at the Foundation: you can feel the buzz of activity as we prepare for the start of a new school year in many parts of the world. Across our range of fantastic (and free) programmes, everyone works hard to create new and improved resources that help teachers and students worldwide.
We’ve asked some of our programme leads to tell you what’s new in their respective areas. We hope that you’ll come away with a good idea of the breadth and depth of teacher support that’s on offer. Is there something we aren’t doing yet that we should be? Tell us in the comments below.
Sway Grantham has been at the forefront of writing resources for our Teach Computing Curriculum over the last three years. The Curriculum is part of the wider National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) and provides hundreds of free classroom resources for teachers, from Key Stage 1 to 4. Each resource includes lesson plans, slides, activity sheets, homework, and assessments. Since we published the Curriculum in 2020, all lessons have been reviewed and updated at least once. Managing the process of continuously improving these resources is a key part of Sway’s work.
Hi Sway, what updates have you been making to the Teach Computing Curriculum to help teachers this year?
We make changes to the Teach Computing Curriculum all the time! However, specific things we are excited about ahead of the new school year are updates to how our content is presented on the website so that it’s really easy to see which unit you should be teaching in each half term. We’ve also renamed some of the units to make it clearer what they cover. And to help Key Stage 3 teachers launch Computing in secondary school with skills that are foundational for progress through the requirements of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, we’ve updated the first Year 7 unit, now called Clear messaging in digital media.
You recently asked for teachers’ feedback as part of an annual impact survey. What did you find out?
We are still in the process of looking through the feedback in detail, but I can share some high-level insights. 96% of teachers who responded to the survey gave a score between 7 and 10 for recommending that other teachers use the Teach Computing Curriculum. Over 80% reported that the Teach Computing Curriculum has improved their confidence, subject knowledge, and the quality of their teaching ‘a little’ or ‘a lot’. Finally, over 90% of respondents said the Curriculum is effective at supporting teachers, developing teachers’ subject knowledge, and saving teachers’ time.
We are grateful to the 907 people who took part in the survey! You have all helped us to ensure the Curriculum has a positive impact on teachers and learners throughout England and beyond.
James, why is it so important for teachers to underpin their classroom practice with best-practice pedagogical approaches?
In order to teach any area of the curriculum effectively, educators need to understand both the content they are teaching and the most effective ways to deliver that content. Computing is a broad discipline made up of lots of inter-connected knowledge. Different areas of the subject benefit from different approaches, and this may vary depending on the experience of the learners and the context within which they are learning. Understanding which approaches are best suited to different content helps educators support learners effectively.
Computing education research related to school-aged learners is still in its early stages compared to other subjects, and new approaches and pedagogies are being developed, tested, and evaluated. Staying aware of these developments is important for educators and that’s why it’s something the Foundation is dedicated to supporting.
What do you have in store for teachers this year?
This year we continue to share best practice and hear from educators applying new ideas in their classroom through Hello World magazine and podcast. Educators should also keep a look out for our second Hello World special edition exploring the breadth and depth of Computing. To get hold of a copy of this later this year, make sure you’re subscribed to Hello World.
Allen, what has gone into the making of these new GCSE resources?
I think one of the biggest and most important things that’s been evident to me while working on this project is the care and thought that our content creators have put into each and every piece they worked on. To the end user it will simply be material on a web page, but sitting behind each page are countless discussions involving the whole team around how to present certain facts, concepts, or processes. Sometimes these discussions have even caused us to reevaluate our own thinking around how we deliver computer science content. We have debated the smallest things such as glossary terms, questioning every word to make sure we are as clear and concise as possible. Hopefully the care, expertise, and dedication of the team shines through in what really is a fantastic source of information for teachers and learners.
What do you have in store for teachers and learners this year?
With 96% of teachers and 88% of students reporting that the content is of high quality and easily accessible, we still need to continue to support them to ultimately enable learners to achieve their potential. Looking ahead, there is still lots of work to do to make sure Isaac offers the best possible user experience. And we plan to add a lot more questions to really bolster the numbers of questions at varying levels of difficulty for learners. This will have the added benefit of being useful for any teachers wanting to up-skill too! A massive strength of the platform is its questions, and we are really keen to give as wide a range of them as possible.
Tamasin Greenough Graham leads the team at Code Club, our global network of free, in-school coding clubs for young people aged 9 to 13. In Code Clubs, participants learn to code while having fun getting creative with their new skills. Clubs can be run by anyone who wants to help young people explore digital technologies — you don’t need coding experience at all. The Code Club team offers everything you need, including coding projects with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, and lots of resources to help you support your club members. They are also on hand to answer your questions.
Tamasin, what kind of support can teachers expect when they decide to set up a Code Club?
Running a Code Club really is simple and a lot of fun! We have free training to suit everyone, including webinars that guide you through getting started, a self-study online course you can take to prepare for running your Code Club, and drop-in online Q&A sessions where you can chat about your questions to our friendly team or to other educators who run clubs.
Once you have registered your Code Club, you’ll get access to an online dashboard packed with useful resources: from guidance on preparing and delivering your first session, to certificates to celebrate your club members’ successes, and unplugged activities for learners to do away from the screen.
What experience do you need to run a Code Club?
You don’t need to have any coding experience to run a club, as we provide a giant range of fun coding projects and support materials that can be easily followed by educators and young people alike. You just need to support and encourage your young coders, and you can get in touch with the Code Club team if you need any help!
The project paths we offer provide a framework for young coders to develop their skills, whatever their starting point is. Each path starts with three Explore projects, where coders learn new coding concepts and skills. The next two Design projects in the path help them practise these skills through creating fun games, animations, or websites. The final Invent project of the path gives a design brief, and based on this learners have the space to use their new skills and their creativity to code something based on their own ideas.
Our project paths start with the basics of Scratch, and work through to creating websites in HTML and CSS, and to text-based coding in Python. For more advanced or adventurous coders, we also offer project paths to make physical projects with Raspberry Pi Pico, create 3D models in Blender, or even build 3D worlds in Unity.
Why is it important to teach coding to primary-aged children?
Lots of primary-aged children use digital technology every day, whether that be a TV, a phone, playing video games, or a computer at school. But they don’t have to be just consumers of technology. Through learning to code, young people become able to create their own technology, and our projects are designed to help them see how these new skills allow them to express themselves and solve problems that matter to them.
What young people do with their new skills is up to them – that’s the exciting part! Computing skills open paths to a wide range of projects and work where digital skills are helpful. And while learning coding is fun and useful, it also helps learners develop a many other important skills to do with problem solving, teamwork, and creativity.
Martin O’Hanlon heads the team that produces our free online courses programme. If you’re looking for continued professional development in computer science, look no further than to our more than 35 courses. (For teachers in England, a large number of the courses count towards the NCCE’s Primary, Secondary, or GCSE certificates.) Curated in 13 curated learning pathways, all of our courses provide high-quality training that you can take at home, at a time that suits you.
Martin, what can learners expect from taking one of our online courses?
Our online computing courses are free and have something for everyone who is interested in computing. We offer pathways for learning to program in Python or Scratch, teaching computing in the classroom, getting started with physical computing, and many more.
We vary the materials and formats used in our courses, including videos, written articles, quizzes, and discussions to help learners get the most out of the experience. You will find a lot of practical activities and opportunities to practice what you learn. There are loads of opportunities to interact with and learn from others who are doing the course at the same time as you. And educators from the Raspberry Pi Foundation join the courses during facilitation periods to give their advice, support, and encouragement.
What is the idea behind the course pathways?
We have a large catalogue of online training courses, and the pathways give learners a starting point. They group the courses into useful collections, offering a recommended path for everyone, whether that’s people who are brand-new to computing or who have identified a gap in their existing computing skills or knowledge.
Our aim is that these pathways help people find the right course at the right point in their computing journey.
Thanks, everyone.
One more thing…
We’re also very excited to work on new research projects this school year, to help deepen the computing education community’s understanding of how to teach the subject in schools. Are you a primary teacher in England who is interested in making computing culturally relevant for your pupils?
We’re currently looking for teachers to take part in our research project around primary school culturally adapted resources, running from October 2022 to July 2023. Find out more about what taking part involves.
We are looking for primary schools in England to get involved in our new research study investigating how to adapt Computing resources to make them culturally relevant for pupils. In a project in 2021, we created guidelines that included ideas about how teachers can modify Computing lessons so they are culturally relevant for their learners. In this new project, we will work closely with primary teachers to explore this adaptation process.
Designing equitable and authentic learning experiences requires a conscious effort to take into account the characteristics of all learners and their social environments.
This project will help increase the education community’s understanding of ways to widen participation in Computing. The need to do this is demonstrated (as only one example among many) by the fact that in England’s 2017 GCSE Computer Science cohort, Black students were the most underrepresented group. We will investigate how resources adapted to be culturally relevant might influence students’ ideas about computing and contribute to their sense of identity as a “computer person”.
We need to work to enable a more diverse group of learners to feel that they belong in computing, encouraging them to choose to continue with it as a discipline in qualifications and careers.
This study is funded by the Cognizant Foundation and we are grateful for their generous support. Since 2018, the Cognizant Foundation has worked to ensure that all individuals have equitable opportunities to thrive in the jobs driving the future. Their work aligns with our mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies.
What will taking part in the project involve?
This project about culturally adapted resources will take place between October 2022 and July 2023. It draws from ideas on how to bridge the gap between academic research and classroom teaching, and we are looking for 12 primary teachers to work closely with our researchers and content writers in three phases using a tested co-creation model.
We will work closely with a group of teacher so we can learn from each other.
By taking part, you will gain an excellent understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy and develop your knowledge and skills in delivering culturally responsive Computing lessons. We will value your expertise and your insights into what works in your classroom, and we will listen to your ideas.
Phase 1 (November 2022)
We will kick off the project with a day-long workshop on 2 November at our head office in Cambridge, which will bring all the participating teachers together. (Funding is available for participating schools to cover supply costs and teachers’ travel costs.) In the workshop, we will first explore what culturally relevant and responsive computing means. Then we will work together to look at a half-term unit of work of Computing lessons and identify how it could be adapted. After the workshop day, we will produce an adapted version of the unit of work based on the teachers’ input and ideas.
Phase 2 (February to March 2023)
In the Spring Term, teachers will deliver the adapted unit of work to their class in the second half of the term. Through a survey before and after the set of lessons, students will be asked about their views of computing. Throughout this time, the research team will be available for online support. We may also visit your school to carry out an observation of one of the lessons.
Phase 3 (April to May 2023)
During this phase, the research team will ask participating teachers about their experiences, and about whether and how they further adapted the lessons. Teachers will likely spend 2 to 3 hours in either April or May sharing their insights and recommendations. After this phase, we will analyse the findings from the study and share the results both with the participating teachers and the wider computing education community.
Who are we looking for to take part in this study?
For this study, we are looking for primary teachers who teach Computing to Year 4 or Year 5 pupils in a school in England.
You may be a generalist primary class teacher who teaches all subjects to your year group, or you may be a specialist primary Computing teacher
To take part, your pupils will need access to desktop or laptop computers in the Spring Term, but your school will not need any specialist hardware or software
You will need to attend the in-person workshop in Cambridge on Wednesday 2 November and commit to the project for the rest of the 2022/2023 academic year; funding is available for participating schools to cover supply costs and teachers’ travel costs
Your headteacher will need to support your participation in the study
If you are an interested teacher, please apply to take part in this project by the closing date of Monday 26 September. If you have any questions, email us at research@raspberrypi.org.
Sobhy Fouda started his Astro Pi journey in 2019 by helping a group of young people participate in Astro Pi Mission Zero, the beginners’ activity of the annual European Astro Pi Challenge. In Mission Zero, participants write a simple computer program that runs on board the International Space Station (ISS).
Sobhy with a group of the young people he mentored in the Astro Pi Challenge.
Seeing the wonder on the faces of the young people on the day when their programs were sent to space motivated Sobhy to take the next step: the year after, he became the mentor of a team of young people who wanted to take part in Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2020/21. Sobhy supported them for 8 months as they designed and wrote a program to conduct their own scientific experiment on the ISS. The team placed among the 10 winners of Mission Space Lab that year.
Among this winning team was Ismail, who joined Sobhy as a mentor for the next round of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab in 2021/22. We spoke to Sobhy and Ismail about their experiences as mentors, about how being involved in Astro Pi changed their life, and about how when you dream big, you can inspire others to do the same.
Finding inspiration in mentoring young people
“I have always loved space and I had big dreams of becoming a pilot,” said Sobhy. After graduating with a mechatronics engineering degree from the German University in Cairo, he moved to the UK to study aircraft maintenance and aerospace engineering. During this time, Sobhy heard about the Astro Pi Challenge and decided to support some young people in his community to take part in Mission Zero. “It was my first experience with the Astro Pi programme, so it was a great first step for me to teach the team some basic Python skills.”
Sobhy says about mentoring: “Seeing the team’s reaction was so rewarding.”
Sadly, Sobhy was unable to continue down his chosen career path in the UK due to health issues. He said, “It was a very difficult time for me. It was hard to walk away from a dream I had held for so long. I decided to apply for a scholarship within aerospace in Germany, focusing more on writing code, as well as on R&D [research and development].” Sobhy credited his participation as a mentor in Mission Zero as crucial to his success with this next step: “I thoroughly believe that my mentorship of a Mission Zero team helped me to demonstrate my social commitment, which was a significant requirement for the scholarship.”
When Sobhy was awarded the scholarship, he and his wife moved to Berlin, but it was hard for him to find inspiration. This changed when he decided to be an Astro Pi mentor again. “My wife put the word out about it [Astro Pi Mission Space Lab] in my community, and we had a number of young people come forward.”
Supporting young people to understand the Astro Pi computers
With help from Sobhy, his Mission Space Lab team started thinking through experiment ideas a couple of months in advance of the challenge start. “Once I had got the kids familiarised with the sensors on the Astro Pi computer and the conditions on the ISS, it was the logical next step to start introducing more Python to learn how to control these sensors and discuss what we could analyse.”
On the ISS, the first-generation Astro Pi computers, which Sobhy’s team used, and the new Astro Pi computers (with green displays), which we sent to space last year.
Sobhy’s team successfully submitted an idea for a Mission Space Lab experiment: investigating how the Earth’s magnetic field correlates with its climate, and how this affects near-Earth objects’ behaviour in low-Earth orbit. Next, the team of young people received an Astro Pi hardware kit with which to test the program they wrote in realistic conditions. Sobhy said that “once we received our Astro Pi kit with the sensors, I then used these sensors to make the experiments more relatable to the kids, getting them to measure the humidity in their rooms for example, and I tried to gamify the sessions as much as possible to keep it fun and ignite their imagination.”
A photo of the Maledives captured by Sobhy’s team during their experiment for Mission Space Lab 2020/21.
One young person on Sobhy’s Mission Space Lab team was Ismail, who was 17 at the time. Ismail explained, “I had some programming experience, as I had worked in Sobhy’s previous teams for Mission Zero, but taking part in Mission Space Lab really helped me to develop these skills in a practical way.”
Ismail, who went from being an Astro Pi participant to mentoring a team together with Sobhy
Ismail was particularly surprised by how much he loved working with the Astro Pi hardware . “I always thought I would follow a career path in programming, however, working with the Raspberry Pi computer and its sensors made me realise that I liked working with the hardware even more than doing programming,” said Ismail. “I ended up changing my choice of degree to mechatronics, so my Mission Space Lab experience really helped me to find the career path I was meant to be on.”
Making a real impact through mentoring
Taking part in Astro Pi Mission Space Lab wasn’t the only thing that shaped Ismail’s path: he credits Sobhy’s mentorship for helping him achieve his goals. “Sobhy was such a good mentor. His passion for the project radiated from him and infected us all! He explained what we needed to tackle, asked questions, and then gave us small activities to put our programming experience into practice in a practical way. It made the programming so much more interesting.”
Sobhy said that when the team was announced among the winners of Mission Space Lab in the 20/21 Astro Pi Challenge, “seeing the team’s reaction was so rewarding. All our hard work paid off, and I was so happy and proud of the team and what they had achieved.” Ismail added, “I still have to pinch myself that we actually won. I’m constantly asking myself if it actually happened, as it was so unbelievable. It was incredible.”
The river Nile in Egypt, photographed by Sobhy’s team during their experiment for Mission Space Lab 2020/21.
Sobhy has stayed in contact with the young people he mentored in the Astro Pi Challenge and their bond remains strong. Ismail said, “He has really become a friend. He was always so helpful and knowledgeable. I just loved working with him, so when he asked if I wanted to become an assistant Astro Pi mentor, I took the opportunity despite having other commitments.”
Mentoring and the skills it teaches
Moving on to become a mentor alongside Sobhy in the 2021/22 Astro Pi Challenge was an eye-opening experience for Ismail. “I had to learn a new set of skills,” said Ismail. “In particular, I realised I needed to improve my presentation skills. To start with I was really uncomfortable speaking in front of a group, but now I’m not, and this confidence transferred over to my university studies. That’s been a really great benefit I’ve taken from the experience.”
“[My] Mission Space Lab experience really helped me to find the career path I was meant to be on.”
Ismail, Mission Space Lab participant and mentor
For us it was wonderful to hear about these lasting friendships and connections that have formed among the people participating in Mission Space Lab. Both Sobhy and Ismail felt that while mentoring a Mission Space Lab team can be challenging at times, the rewards are worth it. Watching their team develop and seeing the young people connect made the experience extremely rewarding.
Ismail concluded by saying: “Astro Pi has been one of the best experiences I have had in my life. I have so much to be thankful for, and I owe this to Astro Pi, but even more to my mentor Sobhy. He has encouraged me to have this incredible experience, helped me find my path in life, and guided me every step of the way. I will remember him and be thankful to him for the rest of my life. It’s been life-changing.”
Get involved in Astro Pi Mission Space Lab
In only a few days, you’ll be able to register as a team mentor for Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2022/23.
The European Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA education programme in collaboration with us at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, starts again from 12 September. Sign up to the newsletter at astro-pi.org to be the first to hear news about the programme.
