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cholten99I had this grand plan (yes, another one). I was going to write a "Coding for Kids" website. I was going to be epic with links to websites (including thumbnails), tons of resources, how to set up your own coding club, online peer-to-peer mentoring, forums, etc, etc. I just needed to sit down and get it down.
That was about eight months ago.
Of course it doesn't help that I'm not really a website designer. It could probably be done in something like Drupal fairly easily but there's always been more pressing projects to do. In the meantime I've collected my own person list of articles, blogs, blog posts, twitter feeds, website, etc, etc and it's already over a 100 links.
There is another the huge list of links at the Coding for Kids wiki and the already long contacts page there. I'm not sure how often the wiki is updated though (the last entry on the links page appears to be a couple of months old). The Coding for Kids mailing list (something else I never manage to catch up with) not to mention the BCS-driving Computing at School one are thriving. Code Club has come into existence, YRS is going to be huge this year and the list of cool stuff goes on and on.
What seems obvious to me know is that what this community needs is not a leader (heaven forbid) but a really good curator who pledges to keep track of everything that is going on (including submission of interesting links and event from anyone). They would need to organise the information in ways that are useful to kids, teachers, adult mentors / hackers, etc and, possibly most important, keeps an up-to-date directory of people who are active in this area with a view to putting people in touch with each other and maybe organising future in-person gatherings.
Let's be clear - this is not what many people would call a sexy job. This isn't hacking, it's not PR and they won't be spending a lot of fun time exciting the kids about code. It's really a librarian role and is extraordinarily unlikely that they'd get any money for doing it. However I'm coming to the conclusion that this role is vital for our community as it grows exponentially (globally!) not only to avoid duplication but so we can all stand on the shoulders of other folks doing excellent work in this area.
But now comes that hard part. I don't have time to do this. No-one I know has time to do this (and hacker-type folks would much rather be writing code). So - over to everyone else - how do you think we can find someone really motivated to stand up and say "This is for me!"?
That was about eight months ago.
Of course it doesn't help that I'm not really a website designer. It could probably be done in something like Drupal fairly easily but there's always been more pressing projects to do. In the meantime I've collected my own person list of articles, blogs, blog posts, twitter feeds, website, etc, etc and it's already over a 100 links.
There is another the huge list of links at the Coding for Kids wiki and the already long contacts page there. I'm not sure how often the wiki is updated though (the last entry on the links page appears to be a couple of months old). The Coding for Kids mailing list (something else I never manage to catch up with) not to mention the BCS-driving Computing at School one are thriving. Code Club has come into existence, YRS is going to be huge this year and the list of cool stuff goes on and on.
What seems obvious to me know is that what this community needs is not a leader (heaven forbid) but a really good curator who pledges to keep track of everything that is going on (including submission of interesting links and event from anyone). They would need to organise the information in ways that are useful to kids, teachers, adult mentors / hackers, etc and, possibly most important, keeps an up-to-date directory of people who are active in this area with a view to putting people in touch with each other and maybe organising future in-person gatherings.
Let's be clear - this is not what many people would call a sexy job. This isn't hacking, it's not PR and they won't be spending a lot of fun time exciting the kids about code. It's really a librarian role and is extraordinarily unlikely that they'd get any money for doing it. However I'm coming to the conclusion that this role is vital for our community as it grows exponentially (globally!) not only to avoid duplication but so we can all stand on the shoulders of other folks doing excellent work in this area.
But now comes that hard part. I don't have time to do this. No-one I know has time to do this (and hacker-type folks would much rather be writing code). So - over to everyone else - how do you think we can find someone really motivated to stand up and say "This is for me!"?
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Date: 2012-07-16 08:01 pm (UTC)I hope you find someone!