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| Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
Picture a small rural school in New Zealand,
a little over an hour from the capital city, Wellington. It's
surrounded by farms, and many of the children attending have farm-owners
or farm-workers for parents. There's even a demographic shift every
year: when the cattle move to pastures new, so do some of the kids.
There's a BMX track, several large climbing
trees, a huge playing field (into which neighbouring cows sometimes
trespass), an adventure playground and a swimming pool. There's a
dedicated team of teachers and a tightly-knit community of families,
many of whom have lived in the area for generations. There are about 120
children, all of them free-range. There are numerous laptops and
there's a handful of iPads. And, starting on 9th February, there's me.
I wrote in a Friday Rant
last year that I wanted to give something back to the wonderful school
that my children attend, by helping the next generation learn how to
understand computers and program them, not just use them. My initial
plan was for an after-school club using the school's laptops, or maybe a
few Raspberry Pi devices. Perhaps 20 kids, an informal environment and
we'd see how it goes. But I reckoned without those dedicated teachers.
They are keen. Very keen.
Following a meeting this afternoon, our plan
is now this: two groups of 30 students each for 35 minutes, every
Monday from 1:30pm onwards. I'll have classroom support (i.e. crowd
control) from a member of staff, and all the facilities the school can
provide. And the freedom to teach the subject as I see fit.
With freedom comes responsibility, and I've
been thinking about this a lot. I've provisionally entitled the course,
"Understanding and programming computers," and it's the "understanding"
bit that I particularly want to get across.
