All posts by Isabel Ronaldson

Fostering collaboration in the Global Clubs Partner network

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/collaboration-global-clubs-partner-network/

We partner with educational organisations around the world to bring coding activities to young people in their regions through Code Club and CoderDojo. Currently involving 52 organisations in 41 countries, this Global Clubs Partner network shares our passion for empowering kids to create with technology.

Students in a Code Club run by CSEd Botswana.
Learners in a Code Club run by CSEd Botswana, one of our Global Clubs Partners.

A key aspect of how we foster the Global Clubs Partner network is to promote connections between partners. It’s one reason we host regular online meetings and regional in-person events, and connect partners one on one to facilitate information sharing. Today, we’re highlighting three stories from partner organisations that have benefited from working with each other.

Aruba and the Netherlands

In March 2023, the Foundation hosted the first Clubs Conference for educators and volunteers involved with Code Club and CoderDojo. As this event took place in Cambridge, UK, the majority of attendees were from the UK and Republic or Ireland, but a small number came from further away. Much further away, in some cases.

A panel discussion on stage at the Clubs Conference.

Bruce Harms and his colleague Thanya Croes (Full Stack Vision Foundation, Aruba) were attending the Clubs Conference to share their work to increase digital literacy in Aruba through CoderDojo clubs. At a special conference session for international attendees, they connected with Sanneke van der Meer and Marloes van der Meulen (CoderDojo Netherlands), who were also presenting as part of the session.

Two people smiling at the camera.
Thanya and Bruce at the Clubs Conference in 2023.

After the Clubs Conference, the two organisations remained in touch. Later in the year, Bruce and Thanya attended the DojoCon Netherlands 2023 in the Hague. ”It was an amazing day with great workshops and lots of other CoderDojo Champions”, Bruce said. He and Thanya have plans to invite the CoderDojo Netherlands team to Aruba and hope to collaborate on future projects together. 

Malawi and Tanzania

Sylvester Mtumbuka (Computers for Enhanced Education, Malawi) and Mrisho Habibu (AMCET Innovation Hub, Tanzania) first connected at our Global Clubs Partner meetup in Malaysia in late 2022. Sylvester said: “We were the only ones from Africa there and we are from neighbouring countries. We happen to have a lot of goals in common, and we started discussing possible opportunities for collaboration.”

A group of educators.
The attendees of the Global Clubs Partner meetup in Malaysia in 2022.

The result is the Tanzania and Malawi (TaMa) Innovation Initiative, which is dedicated to fostering the educational, technological, and entrepreneurial development of young people in Tanzania and Malawi. It aims to empower young people in under-served communities, offering support for sustainable livelihoods and entrepreneurship, and it is already yielding great results.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.
Sylvester and Mrisho signing their partnership agreement.

As part of their ongoing partnerships with us, Sylvester and Mrisho attended our Global Clubs Partner meetup in South Africa a year later —  the perfect opportunity to sign their partnership agreement.

Greece and Portugal

A chance meeting between Homero Cardoso (TAGUSVALLEY, Portugal) and Manos Zeakis (CoderDojo in Greece) at DojoCon Netherlands 2022 in Almere had unexpected consequences. “We discussed a lot of things, including the difficulty in finding venues for our Dojos in Greece”, Manos said. “Then in October 2023, we met at a Global Clubs Partner call and we talked again. With Homero’s help I contacted a Greek company, and they were immediately enthusiastic about helping us. After a few weeks, the Nea Ionia Dojo was live and the first Ninjas had their first session!”

Someone presenting to a room of people.
Manos holds a workshop.

Homero added: “Getting to know Manos was transformative for me as well. Because of that chance encounter in Almere, this year 7th and 8th grade students are participating in Astro Pi Mission Zero for the first time, mostly due to the inspiring example of Manos’s United Dojos project presented at DojoCon.”

Could your organisation become a Global Clubs Partner?

To find out more about our Global Clubs Partner network and how your organisation might get involved, visit the CoderDojo or Code Club websites, or contact us directly about a partnership.

The post Fostering collaboration in the Global Clubs Partner network appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Creating connections at our 2023 Africa partner meetup

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/2023-global-clubs-partner-meetup-africa/

We partner with organisations around the world to bring coding activities to young people in their regions through Code Club and CoderDojo. Currently involving 54 organisations in 43 countries, this Global Clubs Partner network shares our passion for educating kids to create with technology.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.

We work to connect our Global Clubs Partners to foster a sense of community and encourage collaboration. As part of this, we run in-person meetups to allow our partners to get to know each other better, and to help us understand how we can best support them, and what we can learn from them. Previously held in Penang, Malaysia, and Almere, the Netherlands, our latest meetup took place in Cape Town, South Africa.

Connecting through stories and experiences

Although we’ve seen some surprising points of commonality among all Global Clubs Partners, we also know that our partners find it helpful to connect with organisations based in their region. For the Cape Town meetup, we invited partner organisations from across Africa, hoping to bring together as many people as possible.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.

Our aim was to give our partners the opportunity to share their work and identify and discuss common questions and issues. We also wanted to mitigate some of the challenges of working internationally, such as time constraints, time zones, and internet connectivity, so that everyone could focus on connecting with each other.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.

The meetup agenda included time for each Global Clubs Partner organisation to present their work and future plans, as well as time for discussions on growing and sustaining club volunteer and mentor communities, strategy for 2024, and sharing resources. 

“If the only thing rural communities have is problems, why are people still living there? … Rural communities have gifts, have skills, they have history that is wasting away right now; nobody is capturing it. They have wisdom and assets.”

Damilola Fasoranti from Prikkle Academy, Nigeria, talking about not making assumptions about rural communities and how this shapes the work his organisation does

A group dinner after the meetup enabled more informal networking. The next day, everyone had the chance to get inspired at Coolest Projects South Africa, a regional Coolest Projects event for young tech creators organised by partner organisation Coder LevelUp.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.

The meetup gave the Global Clubs Partners time to talk to each other about their work and experiences and understand one another better. It was also very beneficial for our team: we learned more about how we can best support partners to work in their communities, whether through new resources, information about funding applications, or best practice in overcoming challenges.

Building bridges

After attending a previous meetup, two of our partner organisations had decided to create an agreement for future partnership. We were delighted to learn about this collaboration, and to witness the signing of the agreement at this meetup.

Global Clubs Partners in Africa.

By continuing to bring our partner network together, we hope to foster more cross-organisation partnerships like this around the world that will strengthen the global movement for democratising computing education.

Could your organisation become a Global Clubs Partner?

You can find out how your organisation could join our Global Clubs Partner network on the CoderDojo and Code Club websites, or contact us directly with your questions or ideas about a partnership.

The post Creating connections at our 2023 Africa partner meetup appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Get ready for Moonhack 2023: Bringing space down to Earth

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/moonhack-2023/

Moonhack is a free global, online coding challenge by our partner Code Club Australia, powered by Telstra Foundation. It runs once a year for young learners worldwide. In 2022, almost 44,000 young people from 63 countries registered to take part.

A young person coding during a Moonhack event.

This year, Moonhack will happen from 10 to 26 October, to coincide with World Space Week 2023. The challenge is open to all young learners, wherever they are in the world, and features six brand-new projects that focus on space and innovation. We caught up with Kaye North, Community and Engagement Manager at Code Club Australia, to find out more.

What’s new for 2023?

Moonhack 2023 offers access to engaging new projects for Scratch, micro:bit, and Python. For the first time ever, young people will also have the option to follow a project brief to code their own solution to a space-based issue, using a programming language of their choice.

Two children code on laptops while an adult supports them.

In keeping with this year’s theme — which was inspired by the World Space Week 2023 theme of ‘Space and Entrepreneurship’ — the new Moonhack projects showcase inventions that were created for space exploration but are now used in everyday life, such as mobile phone cameras and LEDs.

Kaye shared that in Australia, inventions created for space travel and exploration are part of the science curriculum at primary school level. She hopes that this year’s Moonhack will help more young people understand how space exploration and coding are connected to their daily lives.

What will young people gain from taking part in Moonhack?

Moonhack features six unique coding projects, giving young people of all ages and experience levels the opportunity to engage and learn. The project brief introduced this year encourages participants to be creative, coding a solution on any platform they choose.

Young learners coding in a computing classroom.

Coders who respond to the project brief will also be in with a chance of having their project selected to be developed into an official Code Club Australia project, for other young people and educators around the world to enjoy.

Kaye emphasised that Moonhack is about more than just taking part in a global event; it also helps young people to better understand the real-world opportunities that coding can offer.

“The more kids we expose this to, the better, expanding coding past just coding and having purpose behind it. And I do try to link things in so that we’re connecting with real-world context, careers…”

Kaye North

How your young coders can get involved

Registration for Moonhack 2023 is open now. The challenge runs from 10 to 26 October, and projects can be submitted until 30 November. Participation is free and open to any young coder, whether they are part of a Code Club or not. The 2023 projects are already available in English, Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, Filipino, French, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish, and will be available in more languages soon. 

To find out more and register to take part, visit the Moonhack website.

Register for Moonhack

Code Club Australia is powered by Telstra Foundation as part of a strategic partnership with us at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

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Bringing computing education research to a new global audience

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/research-global-clubs-partners-code-club-coderdojo/

A network of more than 40 partner organisations in over 30 countries works with us to grow and sustain the worldwide Code Club and CoderDojo networks of coding clubs for young people. These organisations, our Global Clubs Partners, share our mission to enable young people to realise their potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. We support them in various ways, and recently we invited them to two calls with our researchers to discuss new research findings about computing education in primary schools.

Three teenage girls at a laptop
Three girls in a Code Club session in Brazil.

Supporting Global Clubs Partners with research insights

Global Clubs Partners work to train educators and volunteers, provide access to computing equipment, run clubs and events for young people at a local or national level, and much more. Our aim is to provide support that helps the Global Clubs Partners in their work, including tailored resources and regular group calls where we discuss topics such as volunteer engagement and fundraising.

Educator training in a classroom in Benin.
Educator training in Benin, run by Global Clubs Partner organisation Impala Bridge.

Recently, we were excited to be able to highlight research from our newest seminar series to the network. This ongoing seminar series focuses on teaching and learning in primary (K-5) computing education. Many of the Global Clubs Partners work with schools or local education bodies — some partner representatives even come from a teaching background themselves. That’s why we hoped they would be able to use insights from the seminars in their work, whether with learners and educators directly, or to grow their network of Code Clubs or CoderDojos; we know this is easier for them when they can provide evidence to show why these programmes are so beneficial for young people.

Learning from Global Clubs Partners for our future research

We were also very interested to hear the Global Clubs Partners’ perspectives, as they work in a wide variety of contexts around the world. For example, would the research resonate the same way with an organisation based in Kenya as one based in Nepal? This kind of insight is useful for making decisions about our research work in future.

Each of the two calls featured a speaker from the research seminar series summarising their work and inviting attendees to share their own thoughts. We had some fascinating conversations; with partner representatives from seven countries across four continents, the discussions were a great showcase of the different experiences in our partner network. Dr Bobby Whyte, one of the speakers, noted: “Being able to share and discuss work within a global audience has been a really valuable experience.”

Young people at a Code Club session in a classroom.
A Code Club session in a classroom in Portugal.

We found the opportunity to connect our partner network with work from other areas of the Foundation really beneficial, and the Global Clubs Partners did too: their feedback from the calls was uniformly positive. Dr Jane Waite, our Senior Research Scientist, commented that “it’s really important for us to share research with people in different contexts and so exciting to hear when findings resonate and can be used in practice.”

You can find out more about our Global Clubs Partner network on the CoderDojo and Code Club websites, or contact us directly about partnerships.

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Building community with our global clubs partners

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/building-community-global-clubs-partners-code-club-coderdojo/

As part of our mission to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies, we work in partnership with organisations around the globe to grow and sustain the Code Club and CoderDojo networks of coding clubs for young people. These organisations are our global clubs partners, and they undertake activities including training educators and volunteers, providing access to equipment, and running clubs and events for young people at a local or national level.

Educator training in a classroom in Benin.
Educator training in Benin, run by our global clubs partner Impala Bridge.

Meeting in the middle

Given that many people at the Raspberry Pi Foundation are based in the UK and Ireland, and that meeting in person has been restricted during the coronavirus pandemic, our work to connect with the global clubs partners network has largely taken place via video calls these last years. We don’t only connect with partners one to one, we also link them to each other so they can share insights, approaches, and resources. Video calls offer a unique opportunity for bringing together partner organisations located all over the world, but they provide a very different experience to building community in person.

A group of educators.
Our meetup in Malaysia brought together global clubs partners from Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Vietnam, and Malaysia itself.

With a network of 41 organisations in 35 countries, meeting in person requires careful consideration so we can accommodate as many partners as possible. That’s why we decided to hold several regional meetups in 2022 to make it feasible for all partners to join at least one. In October, a meetup took place in the Netherlands, coinciding with DojoCon Netherlands run by local partners. Our most recent meetup happened in early December, the day before the Coolest Projects Malaysia 2022 event, in Penang on the west coast of Malaysia.

Workshop attendees stand around a table.
Meetups with global clubs partners are about connection and knowledge sharing.

At the December meetup, we welcomed participants from 10 partner organisations across Asia, Oceania, and Africa. This group spent a whole day building connections and sharing their work with each other. Together we covered several areas of interest, including volunteer recruitment, training, and recognition — all crucial topics for organisations that rely on volunteers to support young people. Meet-up participants shared resources, discussed how to sustainably grow networks, and planned for the future. The next day, participants had the chance to visit Coolest Projects Malaysia to find even more inspiration while seeing local young people showcase their own tech creations.

At Coolest Projects, a group of people explore a coding project.
At Coolest Projects, young people from Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and beyond showcase tech projects they’ve made.

Although it was only one day, the impact of the meetup has been clear. As we had hoped it would, feedback from the partner organisations was very positive and revolved around community and learning, with participants expressing “feeling better connected” and “interconnectedness”, as well as “learning a lot” and “sharing best practices”. One participant even volunteered to host a future meetup, saying “Next year I would like to run this in my country.”

Workshop attendees at a table.
At the meetup, we discussed topics including club volunteer recruitment, training, and recognition.

Here at the Foundation, we very much share these sentiments. Ellie Proffitt, Code Club Global Partnerships Manager, said: “It was great to see our partners sharing how they support their clubs with each other and bouncing new ideas around. I think we all left feeling very inspired.”

Looking to the future

After the success of these in-person meetups in 2022, we and our global clubs partners are looking forward to future opportunities to work together. Planning for 2023 is of course well underway, with creative, ambitious projects and new partnerships in the pipeline. We all feel renewed in our commitment to our work and mission, and excited for what’s on the horizon. In the words of Sonja Bienert, Senior Community Manager: “Through this collaboration, we’ve reached a new level of trust that will positively influence our work for a long time to come.”

You can find out more about joining our global clubs partner community on the CoderDojo and Code Club websites, or contact us directly with your questions or ideas about a partnership. 

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Take part in Moonhack 2022: Community, culture, coding

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/moonhack-2022/

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.

A girl with a laptop in a space station replica.
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.

The earth seen from space, with a satellite in view.
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.

The Tagai constellation of Torres Strait Islander culture.
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.

Register for Moonhack

Code Club Australia is powered by Telstra Foundation as part of a strategic partnership with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

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