Best Kids Coding Platform

October 24, 2022 · 5 min read

I grew up during the home computing revolution of the 80s when lot’s of kids like me persuaded our parents we needed a computer to learn programming - we actually just wanted to play games - but the joke was on us as we ended up getting sucked into coding anyway.

Games are so much better these days - but also so much more packaged - so how do you get kids into coding ?

There are so many options to choose from.

My son is 10, loves Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite - plays on Xbox and Android

TLDR - go with MakeCode

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Climate Anxiety: Don't Look Up

January 3, 2022 · 4 min read

I really enjoyed the film Don’t look up

As someone who has experienced a visceral fear of our ongoing climate disaster for a long time it was a relief to see this acted out on screen.

The metaphor was the comet - but the fear shown is real - so is the apathy.

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Not Going Back

December 13, 2021 · 1 min read

We’d had some frustrations with school (and some school refusal) then schools closed for lockdown.

Home education worked for us and we decided not to go back.

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Fractions : Maths vs English

April 1, 2021 · 2 min read

I really enjoy maths and my son seems to have picked up this trait, one of the things we’ve enjoyed together is learning about fractions.

It’s one of those things that lots of people find really confusing and I’ve been trying to understand that.

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Lockdown Grammar

February 3, 2021 · 1 min read

With everyone home schooling - how kids learn grammar has become a topic of interest.

I’ve read around this and have been trying to come up with an opinion - this is what I have so far.

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Internet Privacy

February 2, 2021 · 3 min read

Lockdown and homeschool have vastly accelerated the move to online learning for my family as well as many others.

While I am very much a technophile - I have long had some concerns about the more dystopian aspects of our technology.

When I first started using the internet is was very new and (it now seems) somewhat naive, there was a belief that the internet would transcend boundaries, “route around” censorship, and bring us all closer.

It did indeed do all those things - but it now seems to have been a Faustian pact where the terms of the promise were fulfilled but not in the way initially expected.

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Covid Remote Learning Tools

February 1, 2021 · 5 min read

Some Problems

In the current circumstances it seems like we cannot avoid failing our children in some ways: we are merely trying to choose which harm is least. In the emergency to get online education up and running many matters have had less scrutiny than would be normal.

I think it’s worth flagging up some compromises that have been made (even if only for the sake of clarifying my own thoughts).

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On Covid Remote Learning

January 27, 2021 · 4 min read

Lockdown has thrown me deep into a very small part of the education system.

I’ve always had an interest in my son’s education and always had some concerns about the overly political nature of the UK National Curriculum as set by politicians and not so much by educational experts.

I’m just a Dad, a technologist, I went to school, I know some teachers but I make no claim to educational expertise.

Based on my experiences of Open Source Software and related projects and of seeing a rush to embrace technology in schools these are some thoughts on what I think should happen.

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Imagine

January 25, 2021 · 3 min read

We are all so very tired of the death count, of lockdowns, of homeschool, and of anxiety.

We are not all in the same situation.

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12 Things in My Magical Rucksack

January 13, 2021 · 1 min read

by Bob

A rain drop as big as Earth,

the howl of a wolf and the sound of sizzling hot lava,

a razor sharp knife and a cloak of fire,

500 fossils of ice,

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