Schlagwort: CoderDojo

Celebrating European Code Week with our annual EUDojo

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On Wednesday 17 October, CoderDojo held the sixth annual EUDojo in the European Parliament in Brussels.

EUDojo 2018

Since last year’s event, CoderDojo has grown significantly: we have almost 500 new Dojos, and our network now spreads to over 100 countries! We organised this year’s EUDojo to coincided with the annual Europe Code Week — also in its sixth year.

Our event was co-hosted by MEP Seán Kelly and the EPP party, and it was attended by MEPs from over ten European countries. The other attendees were Dojo volunteers and parents from across Europe, along with more than 40 young coders!

These young people travelled to the EU Parliament from Italy, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland to showcase their coding and technology skills. The kids presented technology projects they had created to the MEPs and sponsors, and they also taught MEPs to write their first lines of code!

Irish MEP Seán Kelly opened EUDojo and spoke of the pride he felt working with CoderDojo on such a special event. During the coding session, the young coders taught MEPs how to create a basic game using Scratch, and showed them how to build a website using HTML and CSS. Participants also learned how to program micro:bits, which created a fantastic buzz amongst the MEPs and their young tutors.

Coding projects to impress the MEPs

The CoderDojo youths made great use of this opportunity to showcase projects that they have made in their local Dojos for the politicians and sponsors.

Nadezhda from the Sofia Dojo in Bulgaria showed off a Scratch game she had built to test players’ agility skills, taking inspiration from river crossing puzzles.

Nadezhda from the Sofia Dojo in Bulgaria

Lucy Brennan and Caragh Bolger from the Waterford Dojo in Ireland presented two very different projects. Lucy demonstrated Piano Pal, a project she created to help people learn and practice to play the piano. Caragh Bolger presented her project How to make the world a better place, which is about the little things that make the world better.

Lucy Brennan and Caragh Bolger from the Waterford Dojo in Ireland

Edward from Harrogate Dojo, UK, presented his project for encrypting and decrypting files in C++ .

Edward from the Harrogate Dojo

Innovators of the future

Cabinet member Manuel Mateo Goyet discussed the importance of digital skills, highlighting the importance of encouraging girls to get involved. He noted that he was delighted to see just as many girls coding at EUDojo as boys, and that he was looking forward to sharing photos from the day with his daughter to encourage her too.

Cabinet member Manuel Mateo Goyet

Karolina Telejko, SAP’s EU Government Relations Director, discussed their approach to training, lifelong learning, and building partnerships, and explained why EUDojo sponsor SAP decided to help spread coding skills around the world.

Karolina Telejko, SAP’s EU Government Relations Director

Derk Oldenburg of Liberty Global spoke about social innovation and how it is promoted by CoderDojo’s Future Makers Bento Box resources for young coders. He challenged young people around the world to find a social issue they care about and design a solution to it using technology.

Derk Oldenburg of Liberty Global

Giving young people the space to become inventors

Giustina Mizzoni, Executive Director of the CoderDojo Foundation, hopes that this event will drive more organisations and public services to invest in young people’s technology skills.

“We are delighted to be co-hosting EU Dojo, the flagship CoderDojo Europe Code Week event, for the sixth year running. This event was made possible thanks to our partners Liberty Global and SAP, and the team at MEP Sean Kelly’s office. At this year’s event, we are marking the work of libraries and the significant contribution they make to the CoderDojo movement.”

Giustina Mizzoni, Executive Director of the CoderDojo Foundation

“Today, as always, I was incredibly impressed by the young people’s projects. All of these projects had one thing in common: they were made using creativity! Learning how to code gives young people the opportunity to express themselves and develop their skills. I hope that, as a result of today, more library groups will be inspired to join the CoderDojo movement, and use their space to give more young people the opportunity to code, create, and learn about technology!”

Learn more about CoderDojo

If you’d like to find out more about CoderDojo, from their to starting a Dojo in your local area, visit the CoderDojo website. You can also sign up for our free three-week online training course, and learn everything you need to start a Dojo and help enable young people worldwide to create and explore technology together:

Start a CoderDojo || free online learning || Raspberry Pi Foundation

Get support and advice on how to grow your confidence in coding and start a CoderDojo for young people in your area.

Website: LINK

22/10/2018
Hang out with Raspberry Pi this month in California, New York, and Boston

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This month sees two wonderful events where you can meet the Raspberry Pi team, both taking place on the weekend of September 22 and 23 in the USA.

And for more impromptu fun, you can also hang out with our Social Media Editor and fellow Pi enthusiasts on the East Coast on September 24–28.

Coolest Projects North America

In the Discovery Cube Orange County in Santa Ana, California, team members of the Raspberry Pi Foundation North America, CoderDojo, and Code Club will be celebrating the next generation of young makers at Coolest Projects North America.

Coolest Projects is a world-leading showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers, and entrepreneurs. This year, for the first time, we are bringing Coolest Projects to North America for a spectacular event!

While project submissions for the event are now closed, you can still get the last FREE tickets to attend this showcase on Sunday, September 23.

To get your free tickets, click here. And for more information on the event, visit the Coolest Projects North America homepage.

World Maker Faire New York

For those on the east side of the continent at World Maker Faire New York, we’ll have representation in the form of Alex, our Social Media Editor.

The East Coast’s largest celebration of invention, creativity, and curiosity showcases the very best of the global Maker Movement. Get immersed in hundreds of projects and multiple stages focused on making for social good, health, technology, electronics, 3D printing & fabrication, food, robotics, art and more!

Alex will be adorned in Raspberry Pi stickers while exploring the cornucopia of incredible projects on show. She’ll be joined by Raspberry Pi’s videographer Brian, and they’ll gather footage of Raspberry Pis being used across the event for videos like this one from last year’s World Maker Faire:

Raspberry Pi Coffee Robot || Mugsy || Maker Faire NY ’17

Labelled ‘the world’s first hackable, customisable, dead simple, robotic coffee maker’, and powered by a Raspberry Pi, Mugsy allows you to take control of every aspect of the coffee-making process: from grind size and water temperature, to brew and bloom time.

So if you’re planning to attend World Maker Faire, either as a registered exhibitor or an attendee showing off your most recent project, we want to know! Share your project in the comments so we can find you at the event.

A week of New York and Boston meetups

Lastly, since she’ll be in New York, Alex will be out and about after MFNY, meeting up with members of the Raspberry Pi community. If you’d be game for a Raspberry Pi-cnic in Central Park, Coffee and Pi in a cafe, or any other semi-impromptu meetup in the city, let us know the best days for you between Monday, September 24 to Thursday, September 27! Alex will organise some fun gatherings in the Big Apple.

You can also join her in Boston, Massachusetts, on Friday, September 28, where Alex will again be looking to meet up with makers and Pi enthusiasts — let us know if you’re game!

This is weird

Does anyone else think it’s weird that I’ve been referring to myself in the third person throughout this post?

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06/09/2018
Happy 7th birthday, CoderDojo!

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What is CoderDojo?

CoderDojo is a global network of free informal clubs for young people aged 7-17 to learn how to code and create with technology. There are more than 1400 active Dojos in 75 countries, regularly attended by 40000 young people.

Happy birthday, CoderDojo 🎂

Seven years ago today, on 23 July, James Whelton and Bill Liao held the first-ever CoderDojo session in Cork, Ireland. When that first group of volunteers and young people (Ninjas) came together to learn how to make a website, design a game, or write their first program, they never imagined how far the CoderDojo movement would go. But the message of CoderDojo and its values of openness, inclusivity, creativity, and community have resonated with many thousands of people and continue to encourage them to get involved to learn and to volunteer.

Founders of CoderDojo James Whelton and Bill Liao

Going global in 95 countries

Since that first Dojo session, the movement has become truly global: there are now more than 1900 Dojos in 95 countries around the world. And not only CoderDojo clubs have developed, but also a fantastic, welcoming, worldwide community of volunteers, and a foundation that provides it with support and resources and is part of the Raspberry Pi family.

Sharing the community spirit

As if running and growing the network of Dojos wasn’t enough, our community also runs wonderful events: CoderDojo volunteers started the Coolest Projects showcase in 2012 as a way for Ninjas to come together and share the projects they have created.

Celebrating Coolest Projects International 2018

Coolest Projects is a world-leading showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers, and entrepreneurs from across the globe.

This year, more than 1000 young coders showcased what they have built at the international Coolest Projects event in Dublin, with regional events taking place in Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, the UK and, in two months’ time, in North America.

Passionate CoderDojo community members also saw the importance of meeting each other and sharing experiences of running their Dojos, so they decided to create an event to bring community members together: DojoCon gives volunteers from around the world the opportunity to gather in person, make friends, and learn from each other to better run and develop their Dojos. Regional DojoCons have been held in Toscana (Italy), Perth (Australia), and Osaka (Japan), along with numerous smaller mentor meetups that offer more localised support and friendships.

And MegaDojos have enabled groups of hundreds of young people to meet up for a day and code together, also providing the chance for newcomers to get involved and try a variety of technologies.

Forming regional bodies

In regions where the concentration of Dojos and the drive to create more clubs are high, CoderDojo community members have formed regional bodies to provide focused support for growth.

“We are located in a city in Italy hit by the earthquake in 2016. We do not have a lot of places to meet. But every month, with a lot of work, we organize a CoderDojo, and the happiness in the children’s eyes is all we need!” – Dojo champion, Macerata, Italy

This highlights the grass-roots nature of the movement, and the passion that people involved have to achieve our goal of every child worldwide having the opportunity to learn to code and to be creative with technology in a safe and social environment.

Publications and initiatives

Since 2011, community members have created and shared learning resources, and translated content at home and in organised hackathon events to help more young people learn to program. Following on from these resources developed in Dojos, two CoderDojo books have been released and translated into ten languages to help even young people in areas where Dojos haven’t cropped up develop the skills to be tech creators.

The CoderDojo Foundation is implementing initiatives to encourage diversity in all Dojos, such as the CoderDojo Girls Initiative, which was inspired by and shares the outstanding work that Dojo volunteers around the world already do to encourage more girls to become Ninjas and learn to code.

Award winners

Since CoderDojo began, we’ve had eight girls attending Dojos be named European Digital Girl of the Year. Ninjas have been nominated for the BAFTA Young Game Designers award and won regional robotics challenges. They’ve travelled to the European Parliament to show MEPs a thing or two about coding. Ninjas have coded in libraries, tech-hubs, nursing homes, hotels, community centres, children’s hospitals, under trees, and on buses!

Answering the call

CoderDojo has encouraged cross-collaboration and intercultural learning. For example, Ninjas in Japan made 1000 origami shuriken to share with Ninjas attending this year’s Coolest Projects International in Dublin, and young people and volunteers in Dojos in Argentina and Belgium worked together to enter the European Astro Pi Challenge. And on community calls, volunteers from different continents, who would never have the opportunity to talk to each other otherwise, ask each other questions and offer each other advice.

“CoderDojo provides Ninjas with a positive, safe space for them to exercise their brain and to work on various projects. The sense of recognition and achievement among the young people is amazing. [Where our Dojo is located] is considered a disadvantaged area with a high level of poverty, substance misuse issues, and unemployment. Having such a positive space like CoderDojo for the young people of this community is acting as a prevention factor to the issues. Our young people are continuously learning, exploring, building relationships, and increasing their chances at a better quality of life.” – Dojo mentor, North Dublin, Ireland

Over the past seven years, thousands of amazing volunteers and supporters around the world have enabled 200000 young people to be technology creators. In 2017 alone, volunteers gave an incredible 290000 hours to support Ninjas to gain the confidence and skills to create with code!

☯CoderDojo☯ on Twitter

It was amazing celebrating our 7th birthday today. Well done in particular to all the young people who attended, those who shared what they were working on with the Duke & Duchess of Sussex, to their parents/guardians, & all the volunteers for their support thoughout the day!♥️

But it’s not just time they give, volunteers have contributed their enthusiasm, creativity, and love to create a generous and fun community! We would not have reached this seventh birthday without all the champions, mentors, and other volunteers who are the backbone of the CoderDojo movement, so thank you! We hope, with all your help, to continue to inspire young coders around the world.

Join the CoderDojo movement

“As the champion, the Dojo is the thing in my life I am most proud of, and that I look forward to each week. It is the most meaningful thing that I do, and seeing all the kids having a great time with their friends each week, and enjoying the learning experience, is truly fulfilling. It makes me wish I was young again to have such an opportunity to learn and be cool with all the great kids involved. It re-ignites my own passion for technology, which sometimes is easy to forget!” – Dojo champion, Kildare, Ireland

If you would like to start a fun, inclusive coding club for 7- to 17-year-olds in your local area, then find out more about setting up a Dojo here.

Website: LINK

23/07/2018
Join us at the Education Summit at PyCon UK 2018
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PyCon UK 2018 will take place on Saturday 15 September to Wednesday 19 September in the splendid Cardiff City Hall, just a few miles from the Sony Technology Centre where the vast majority of Raspberry Pis is made. We’re pleased to announce that we’re curating this year’s Education Summit at the conference, where we’ll offer opportunities for young people to learn programming skills, and for educators to undertake professional development!

PyCon UK 2018 is your chance to be welcomed into the wonderful Python community. At the Education Summit, we’ll put on a young coders’ day on the Saturday, and an educators’ day on the Sunday.

Saturday — young coders’ day

On Saturday we’ll be running a CoderDojo full of workshops on Raspberry Pi and micro:bits for young people aged 7 to 17. If they wish, participants will get to make a project and present it to the conference on the main stage, and everyone will be given a free micro:bit to take home!

Kids’ tickets at just £6 will be available here soon.

Kids presenting their projects to the conference

Sunday — educators’ day

PyCon UK has been bringing developers and educators together ever since it first started its education track in 2011. This year’s Sunday will be a day of professional development: we’ll give teachers, educators, parents, and coding club leaders the chance to learn from us and from each other to build their programming, computing, and digital making skills.

Professional development for educators

Educators get a special entrance rate for the conference, starting at £48 — get your tickets now. Financial assistance is also available.

Call for proposals

We invite you to send in your proposal for a talk and workshop at the Education Summit! We’re looking for:
- 25-minute talks for the educators’ day
- 50-minute workshops for either the young coders’ or the educators’ day
If you have something you’d like to share, such as a professional development session for educators, advice on best practice for teaching programming, a workshop for up-skilling in Python, or a fun physical computing activity for the CoderDojo, then we’d love to hear about it! Please submit your proposal by 15 June.

After the Education Summit, the conference will continue for two days of talks and a final day of development sprints. Feel free to submit your education-related talk to the main conference too if you want to share it with a wider audience! Check out the PyCon UK 2018 website for more information.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in September!

Website: LINK
23/05/2018
Announcing Coolest Projects North America

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The Raspberry Pi Foundation loves to celebrate people who use technology to solve problems and express themselves creatively, so we’re proud to expand the incredibly successful event Coolest Projects to North America. This free event will be held on Sunday 23 September 2018 at the Discovery Cube Orange County in Santa Ana, California.

What is Coolest Projects?

Coolest Projects is a world-leading showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers, and entrepreneurs. The event is both a competition and an exhibition to give young digital makers aged 7 to 17 a platform to celebrate their successes, creativity, and ingenuity.

In 2012, Coolest Projects was conceived as an opportunity for CoderDojo Ninjas to showcase their work and for supporters to acknowledge these achievements. Week after week, Ninjas would meet up to work diligently on their projects, hacks, and code; however, it can be difficult for them to see their long-term progress on a project when they’re concentrating on its details on a weekly basis. Coolest Projects became a dedicated time each year for Ninjas and supporters to reflect, celebrate, and share both the achievements and challenges of the maker’s journey.

Coolest Projects North America

Not only is Coolest Projects expanding to North America, it’s also expanding its participant pool! Members of our team have met so many amazing young people creating in all areas of the world, that it simply made sense to widen our outreach to include Code Clubs, students of Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, and members of the Raspberry Jam community at large as well as CoderDojo attendees.

Exhibit and attend Coolest Projects

Coolest Projects is a free, family- and educator-friendly event. Young people can apply to exhibit their projects, and the general public can register to attend this one-day event. Be sure to register today, because you make Coolest Projects what it is: the coolest.

Website: LINK

19/04/2018
Start a CoderDojo with our free online training

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You can now sign up to our newest free online course Start a CoderDojo to learn more about CoderDojo and how you can easily set up one of these free coding clubs for young people in your area. With less than two weeks until the course begins, we wanted to tell you about the course’s content and why the course’s creator put it together for you.

Start a CoderDojo || free online learning || Raspberry Pi Foundation

Get support and advice on how to grow your confidence in coding and start a CoderDojo for young people in your area.

What is CoderDojo?

CoderDojo is a global network of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for young people aged 7 to 17. There are currently more than 1700 Dojos running regularly across 75 countries. All of these clubs were started by individuals who are passionate about giving young people the opportunity to learn to code. Some people assume you need technical skills to start a Dojo, but that’s not true. The most important thing is that you can bring people together for a shared goal.

What is covered on the course?

The course was developed by Philip, CoderDojo’s Educational Content Lead. It gives those who think empowering young people to be tech creators is important the resources and supports to achieve that goal by starting a Dojo. Divided over three weeks and running for about four hours in total, the course provides practical advice and resources on everything you need to know to plan and run a fun, social, and creative coding club for young people.

“In the first week, you’ll look at what coding is, at the worldwide CoderDojo community of coding clubs, and at the creative approach CoderDojos take to helping young people learn to code. In week two, you’ll move on to setting up your Dojo with a team, a venue, and any needed materials. You’ll also look at how to find young people to attend. Week three wraps up the course by giving you sample plans for a Dojo session and a Dojo’s year, and we’ll be talking about how to grow and develop your Dojo over time as your attendees become better coders.”
— Philip

Who is the course for?

Anyone interested in enabling young people to be tech creators should take this course. Parents, teachers, librarians, IT professionals, youth workers, and others have all started Dojos in their community. They say that “it’s an amazing experience that led [them] to expand [their] personal horizons”, and that they “find it really rewarding”.

The course is free and open to all — if you’re interested, then sign up now.

If you’re already mentoring at a Dojo, the course is a great opportunity to revise what you’ve learnt, and a chance to share your insights with newcomers in the discussion sections. Parents and guardians who wish to learn more about CoderDojo and are considering getting involved are also more than welcome to join.

Website: LINK

16/04/2018
Coolest Projects: for young people across the Raspberry Pi community

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Coolest Projects is a world-leading annual showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers, and entrepreneurs. Young people come to the event to exhibit the cool ideas they have been working on throughout the year. And from 2018, Coolest Projects is open to young people across the Raspberry Pi community.

Coolest Projects 2016 Highlights

Coolest Projects is a world leading showcase that empowers and inspires the next generation of digital creators, innovators, changemakers and entrepreneurs! Find out more at: http://coolestprojects.org/

A huge fair for digital making

When Raspberry Pi’s Philip and Ben first visited Coolest Projects, they were blown away by the scope of the event, the number of children and young people who had travelled to Dublin to share their work, and the commitment they demonstrated to work ranging from Scratch projects to home-made hovercraft.

Coolest Projects International 2018 will be held in Dublin, Ireland, on Saturday 26 May. Participants will travel from all over the world to take part in a festival of creativity and tech. We hope you’ll be among them!

“It’s a huge fair especially for coding and digital tech – it’s massive and it’s amazing!“

Coolest Projects International and Coolest Projects UK

As well as the flagship international event in Dublin, Ireland, there are regional events in other countries. All these events are now open to makers and creators across the Raspberry Pi community, from Dojos, Code Clubs, and Raspberry Jams.

This year, for the first time, we are bringing Coolest Projects to the UK for a spectacular regional event! Coolest Projects UK will be held at Here East in London on Saturday 28 April. We’re looking forward to discovering over 100 projects that young people have designed and built, and seeing them share their ideas and their passion for technology, make new friends, and learn from one another.

Fierce focus at Coolest Projects

Who can take part?

If you’re up to 18 years of age and you’re in primary, secondary, or further education, you can join in. You can work as an individual or as part of a team of up to five. All projects are welcome, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert.

You must be able to attend the event that you’re entering, whether Coolest Projects International or a regional event. Getting together with other makers and their fantastic projects is a really important and exciting part of the event, so you can’t take part with an online-only or video-only entry. There are a few rules to make sure everything runs smoothly and fairly, and you can read them here.

Wiktoria Jarymowicz from Poland presents the rocket she built at Coolest Projects

How do I join in?

Your project should fit into one of six broad categories, covering everything from Scratch to hardware projects. If you’ve made something with tech, or you’ve got a project idea, it will probably fit into one of them! Once you’ve picked your project, you need to register it and apply for your space at the event. You can register for Coolest Projects International 2018 right now, and registration for Coolest Projects UK 2018 will open on Wednesday: join our email list to get an update when it does.

How will you choose who gets a place?

There are places available for 750 projects, and our goal is to have enough room for everyone who wants to come. If more makers want to bring their projects than there are places available, we’ll select entries to show a balance of projects from different regions and different parts of our communities, from groups and individuals, and from girls and boys, as well as a good mixture of projects across different categories.

I need help to get started, or help to get there

To help get your ideas flowing and guide you through your project, we’ve prepared a set of How to build a project worksheets. And if you’d like to attend Coolest Projects International, but the cost of travel is a problem, you can apply for a travel bursary by 31 January.

Coolest Projects is about rewarding creativity, and we know the Raspberry Pi community has that in spades. It’s about having an idea and making it a reality using the skills you have, whether this is your first project or your fifteenth. We can’t wait to see you at Coolest Projects UK or Coolest Projects International this year!

Website: LINK

22/01/2018
CoderDojo: 2000 Dojos ever

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Every day of the week, we verify new Dojos all around the world, and each Dojo is championed by passionate volunteers. Last week, a huge milestone for the CoderDojo community went by relatively unnoticed: in the history of the movement, more than 2000 Dojos have now been verified!

2000 Dojos

This is a phenomenal achievement for a movement that’s just six years old and powered by volunteers. Presently, there are more than 1650 active Dojos running weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, and all of them are free for participants — for example, the Dojos run by Joel Bayubasire in Kampala, Uganda:

Empowering refugee children

This week, Joel set up his second Dojo and verified it on our global map. Joel is a Congolese refugee living in Kampala, Uganda, where he is currently completing his PhD in Economics at Madison International Institute and Business School.

Joel understands first-hand the challenges faced by refugees who were forced to leave their country due to war or conflict. Uganda is currently hosting more than 1.2 million refugees, 60% of which are children (World Bank, 2017). As refugees, children are only allowed to attend local schools until the age of 12. This results in lower educational attainment, which will likely affect their future employment prospects.

Joel has the motivation to overcome these challenges, because he understands the power of education. Therefore, he initiated a number of community-based activities to provide educational opportunities for refugee children. As part of this, he founded his first Dojo earlier in the year, with the aim of giving these children a chance to compete in today’s global knowledge-based economy.

Aware that securing volunteer mentors would be a challenge, Joel trained eight young people from the community to become youth mentors to their peers. He explains:

I believe that the mastery of computer coding allows talented young people to thrive professionally and enables them to not only be consumers but creators of the interconnected world of today!

Based on the success of Joel’s first Dojo, he has now expanded the CoderDojo initiative in his community; his plan is to provide computer science training for more than 300 refugee youths in Kampala by 2019. If you’d like to learn more about Joel’s efforts, head to this website.

Join the movement

If you are interested in creating opportunities for the young people in your community, then join the growing CoderDojo movement — you can volunteer to start a Dojo or to support an existing one today!

Website: LINK

11/12/2017
Join us for an evening of League of Legends

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Last month, we shared the news that Riot Games is supporting digital literacy by matching 25% of sales of Championship Ashe and Championship Ward to create a charity fund that will benefit the Raspberry Pi Foundation and two other charities.

Riot Games and CoderDojo

CoderDojo and Riot Games have been developing the most glorious of relationships for some time now. Nuala, CoderDojo’s Communications & Community Engagement Lead, explains:

“We’ve been partners with Riot Games for well over a year: together we ran a 24-hackathon at their Dublin office, where Riot games staff members gave their time to develop content for Dojos and to improve our platform; a Dojo regularly runs in their office to support local children to learn coding skills; they’ve also worked closely with us to support Coolest Projects.”

With CoderDojo now part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation family, we’re excited to see where this growing relationship will go.

Vote for the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Riot Games is now calling for all League of Legends players to vote for their favourite charity — the winning organisation will receive 50% of the total fund.

By visiting the ‘Vote for charity’ tab in-client, you’ll be able to choose between the Raspberry Pi Foundation, BasicNeeds, and Learning Equality.

Players can vote only once, and your vote will be multiplied based on your honour level. Voting ends on 5 November 2017 at 11:59pm PT.

League of Legends with Riot Gaming

In honour of the Riot Games Charity Fund vote, and to support the work of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, KimmieRiot and M0RGZ of top female eSports organisation Riot Gaming (no relation to Riot Games) will run a four-hour League of Legends live-stream this Saturday, 21 October, from 6pm to 10pm BST.

Playing as Championship Ashe, they’ll be streaming live to Twitch, and you’re all invited to join in the fun. I’ll be making an appearance in the chat box as RaspberryPiFoundation, and we’ll be giving away some free T-shirts and stickers during the event — make sure to tune in to the conversation.

In a wonderful gesture, Riot Gaming will pass on all donations made to their channel during the live-stream to us. These funds will directly aid the ongoing charitable work of Raspberry Pi and our computing education programmes like CoderDojo.

Make sure to follow Riot Gaming, and activate notifications so you don’t miss the event!

We’re blushing

Thank you to everyone who buys Championship Ashe and Championship Ward, and to all of you who vote for us. We’re honoured to be one of the three charities selected to benefit from the Riot Games Charity Fund.

And a huge thank you to Riot Gaming for organising an evening of Raspberry Pi and League of Legends. We can’t wait!

Website: LINK

18/10/2017
The CoderDojo Girls Initiative
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In March, the CoderDojo Foundation launched their Girls Initiative, which aims to increase the average proportion of girls attending CoderDojo clubs from 29% to at least 40% over the next three years.

Six months on, we wanted to highlight what we’ve done so far and what’s next for our initiative.

What we’ve done so far

To date, we have focussed our efforts on four key areas:
- Developing and improving content
- Conducting and learning from research
- Highlighting role models
- Developing a guide of tried and tested best practices for encouraging and sustaining girls in a Dojo setting (Empowering the Future)
Content

We’ve taken measures to ensure our resources are as friendly to girls as well as boys, and we are improving them based on feedback from girls. For example, we have developed beginner-level content (Sushi Cards) for working with wearables and for building apps using App Inventor. In response to girls’ feedback, we are exploring more creative goal-orientated content.

Moreover, as part of our Empowering the Future guide, we have developed three short ‘Mini-Sushi’ projects which provide a taster of different programming languages, such as Scratch, HTML, and App Inventor.

What’s next?

We are currently finalising our intermediate-level wearables Sushi Cards. These are resources for learners to further explore wearables and integrate them with other coding skills they are developing. The Cards will enable young people to program LEDs which can be sewn into clothing with conductive thread. We are also planning another series of Sushi Cards focused on using coding skills to solve problems Ninjas have reported as important to them.

Research

In June 2017 we conducted the first Ninja survey. It was sent to all young people registered on the CoderDojo community platform, Zen. Hundreds of young people involved in Dojos around the world responded and shared their experiences.

We are currently examining these results to identify areas in which girls feel most or least confident, as well as the motivations and influencing factors that cause them to continue with coding.

What’s next?

Over the coming months we will delve deeper into the findings of this research, and decide how we can improve our content and Dojo support to adapt accordingly. Additionally, as part of sending out our Empowering the Future guide, we’re asking Dojos to provide insights into their current proportions of girls and female Mentors.

We will follow up with recipients of the guide to document the impact of the recommended approaches they try at their Dojo. Thus, we will find out which approaches are most effective in different regional contexts, which will help us improve our support for Dojos wanting to increase their proportion of attending girls.

Role models

Many Dojos, Champions, and Mentors are doing amazing work to support and encourage girls at their Dojos. Female Mentors not only help by supporting attending girls, but they also act as vital role models in an environment which is often male-dominated. Blogs by female Mentors and Ninjas which have already featured on our website include:

What’s next?

We recognise the importance of female role models, and over the coming months we will continue to encourage community members to share their stories so that we bring them to the wider CoderDojo community. Do you know a female Mentor or Ninja you would like to shine a spotline on? Get in touch with us at info@coderdojo.org. You can also use #CoderDojoGirls on social media.

Empowering the Future guide

Ahead of Ada Lovelace Day and International Day of the Girl Child, the CoderDojo Foundation has released Empowering the Future, a comprehensive guide of practical approaches which Dojos have tested to engage and sustain girls.

Some topics covered in the guide are:
- Approaches to improve the Dojo environment and layout
- Language and images used to describe and promote Dojos
- Content considerations, and suggested resources
- The importance of female Mentors, and ways to increase access to role models
For the next month, Dojos that want to improve their proportion of girls can still sign up to have the guide book sent to them for free! From today, Dojos and anyone else can also download a PDF file of the guide.

We would like to say a massive thank you to all community members who have shared their insights with us to make our Empowering the Future guide as comprehensive and beneficial as possible for other Dojos. The CoderDojo Foundation would also like to thank Microsoft, our funding partner on this project, for their commitment to making STEM skills training available to European youth.

Tell us what you think

Have you found an approach, or used content, which girls find particularly engaging? Do you have questions about our Girls Initiative? We would love to hear your ideas, insights, and experiences in relation to supporting CoderDojo girls! Feel free to use our forums to share with the global CoderDojo community, and email us at info@coderdojo.org.

Website: LINK
10/10/2017