For those who don’t know, Code Club is a national network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged around 9-11. There are now over 3700 Code Clubs in the country and thousands of kids are benefiting from the programme.
We have now added all the active Code Clubs within about a five mile radius of Sheffield City Centre to the Sheffield Digital map.
Here are a few things to note:
Of all the clubs listed, three of them are ‘public’ clubs, i.e. ones that anyone can bring their children to, the others are school specific and for pupils only.
The public ones are:
- PlusNet (hosted by Sebastian Marek)
- Riverside Library in Rotherham
- Westfield School
Furthermore, one local club – Malin Bridge Primary – has been designated as a ‘Star Club’, which means you can arrange to visit if you’re interested in starting one yourself.
In addition to the active clubs, many local schools and venues have indicated that they would like volunteers to help them set up a new code club. You can find out if there’s one near you by searching on “I want to volunteer at a club” from the Code Club home page.
Please note that the Sheffield Digital map shows the active clubs only, not the ones that are waiting to get off the ground. Hopefully we’ll see more popping up as they find volunteers!
(And incidentally, if any of the map details are incorrect please let us know or if you’re the organiser, claim the listing and make the change yourself.)
If you want to get involved, and we really encourage you to do so, here are some things you can do:
- Go to the Code Club website and see if a school near you has asked for volunteers.
- Join the #codeclub channel on the Sheffield Digital community Slack team.
- Contact Malin Bridge Primary and ask to visit.
- Take your kids to one of the public clubs and meet the organisers.
Two excellent people you should know are:
Linda Broughton (@lindabroughton) who tirelessly coordinates Code Clubs all over Yorkshire, and Sebastian Marek (@proofek) who runs the PlusNet club in the centre of Sheffield. Linda and Sebastian are both active in the #codeclub Slack channel.
And finally, Code Clubs are aimed at children around ages 9-11 but there are other initiatives aimed at slightly older kids, such as Coder Dojo of which, to my knowledge, we currently have none in operation in the city – it would be great to change that situation. That said, there are several other excellent digital education initiatives going on locally, and I’m compiling information about them into a forthcoming post – so watch this space!
Nurturing the next generation of digital talent is very close to our hearts at Sheffield Digital, as it should be to everyone in the tech business here, and we want to support initiatives that help with this wherever we can.