[LCA2015-Chat] RFC Parenting Miniconf at lca2016

[Kye Russell]

RE education/getting kids interested in CS...

I coordinate the CoderDojo at Curtin University in Perth. We cater to over 160 kids a year, with over 30 volunteers from the community that help introduce children of all ages to programming and other areas of computing. I also work at Curtin, developing/delivering CS activities as part of the university’s engineering outreach program. 

I don’t know if I’d be of any use, especially since I’m a student myself and I (obviously) don’t have children of my own. I don’t really have the context of messing around with C64s in the 80s to draw comparisons from, but I do have a bit of experience with children in a computing/STEM education environment. So I’m happy to help out if any of my knowledge is relevant.

I’ll likely be attending LCA next year and I’ll keep an eye out for any developments.

-- 
Kye Russell

On 17 January 2015 at 11:44:54 am, Jared Ring (jared at ring.gs) wrote:

Calling all parents, educators and other interested parties!

If a group of free and open technology enthusiasts went to playgroup, what would they talk about? What would the kids be playing with and doing?

I'd like to put forward the idea of doing a "Geek Parenting" Mininconf at next year's LCA. I'm putting the concept to the community at large to help define the scope and ideals of the day in preparation for putting in a submission when the CFP opens.

I'm interested in ways to encourage an interest in technology for my children as they grow up. I'm looking for other like minded people to share ideas on what they do with their kids, what works and what doesnt.

Like Bdale (I think) said in Friday's keynote, in the 80s there were books in the library you could borrow that contained BASIC code to be typed into your C64 for fun. Hands up how many people got the bug that way? Well, what is the 21st century equivalent.

I have been thinking about this idea for awhile and comments Bdale made along with Thomas Sprinkmeier's talk on training your minions yesterday gave me the extra enthusiasm to get the ball rolling.

As an aside, how awesome would it be that at a future LCA, one of the tracks in the open hardware miniconf was aimed at kids? And our kids went to that as part of the partners program for that day?


--
Cheers

Jared
_______________________________________________  
Chat mailing list  
Chat at lists.lca2015.linux.org.au  
http://lists.lca2015.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/chat  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lca2015.linux.org.au/pipermail/chat/attachments/20150117/53a529a5/attachment.html>