I first heard about hosting an Hour of Code when we agreed to participate at work during Computer Science Education week and I volunteered to host it. The aim was to be of interest to people who aren’t in computing and to show them that it involves basic problem solving skills at its core. If you enjoy that, you may enjoy computing.
You may have heard about it when President Obama had a go too – we chose the same tutorial for the groups at work.
As hosts, we were initially concerned about hosting sessions with our colleagues without knowing their expectations. We also wondered whether exercises aimed at children were suitable or would be perceived as patronising.
Due to time constraints, we decided to go ahead and it was fun and we ran three sessions. Maybe we had worried too much: we had a whole range of people – from those who wanted to code using a particular language to those who didn’t know what to expect at all.
They may have come across coding by doing some before, through the new Computing curriculum with their kids or from building their own websites or apps. Or they may consider themselves technophobes.
We know that some people who thought the session was not what they were interested in (they expected to learn Java) found the follow-up links we sent were valuable. One was able to explore making apps on their own which was really exciting. Another person continued by completing further modules with their children.
The major impact running the Guardian session had on me was that it led me to to effectively host another one with the community organiser at a Job Club I volunteer with. The trepidation and excitement that showed on her face when she started out was palpable. She then whizzed through it and within twenty minutes was considering hosting sessions for the job club herself.
I also hosted a one-to-one session with a lady who had tried online tutorials in Java etc. without knowing why she wanted to. The beauty of these sessions was that it abstracted all the nuances of a language so that you became less scared of the concepts of coding. Starting off with a language when you’ve never done anything before probably sets you off worrying about the wrong thing, which can be very off-putting.
The site is designed to take away all the blockers – and that is the beauty of this scheme.
Don’t have a computer? These tutorials can run on your phone or tablet. Don’t have time? It only takes an hour (actually it takes most people only twenty minutes to finish it even if they have very little experience). Most folks even skip the videos explaining the tutorial. Don’t have access to anything (apart from paper, pen and cups)? Try the offline/unplugged version or adapt it.
The only blocker I spotted was people understanding how the blocks connect (the tutorials we chose uses blocks similar to Scratch) – this is when they skip the video. Once people see that, they are off and it’s hard to stop them.
The aim is to be self-guided. Hosting a session is a nice bonus.
Some things I observed
- People sometimes just need to give themselves permission to do stuff – and hosting these sessions helps as it’s in a friendly environment
- We were concerned it may seem patronising as it’s catering for kids and considered making our own work-related tutorials, but in fact these tutorials were fun and easy for the participants.
- For those for whom this was way too easy or not what they were looking for, we were able to chat to them and find out what they need and see if we can help with a more tailored approach
- We also followed up with links that may be of interest (i.e. what next) and it was good to hear back from the people
- We encouraged people to work it out for themselves and didn’t just tell them what to do. The tutorials do explain everything if they get stuck though.
- When you are in a profession, you forget what it looks like for outsiders – it’s worth remembering that.
- Before you host the session, make sure you try a couple of tutorials (including the offline/unplugged one so you have a backup plan when tech fails)
- These tutorials can be run on the person’s smartphone or tablet too
- These guidelines contain a helpful list for for you to consider if you want to make your own tutorials to encourage independent learning
- It’s great watching people get excited and hearing what they do next
What next for the participants?
Obviously, you make a connection with the people who come to your session and you can help them directly, as we found out for ourselves. However, in the spirit of self-guided learning, here are some follow-up links
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Beyond the hour of code resources - you can likely do this on a tablet.
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MIT App Inventor - build your own Android apps using blocks again - I tried making Wackamole on my smartphone and adapting it was a lot of fun
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Mozilla AppMaker: Build webapps that are optimised for mobile platforms.
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CYO: A “Choose Your Own Adventure” style webpage maker.
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FutureLearn - Build your First mobile game (using Java)
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codecademy - interactive environment
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treehouse - websites and apps
The Hour of Code week is over but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out and maybe encouraging others to do the same.