Widening Participation and Outreach, Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick

Margaret is interested in the challenges of teaching computing, and the importance of creativity in technology focused education, particularly when engaging with younger people. She explores community based approaches, and physical computing to capture the interest of young learners. TurtleStitch resources are available at www.warwick.ac.uk/TurtleStitch

The Royal School Junior School

A little over three year's ago I was asked to take over teaching Computer Science at my school, and as it often the case, I knew very little able the subject. Thankfully a friend pointed me in the direction of a Scratch conference in Amsterdam and I have never looked back. Last year I attended my third Scratch conference and excitingly had a large enough budget to finally buy an embroidery machine - Turtle Stitch here I come!

I currently teach Computer Science to children aged between 4 and 16 in a school where children taught separately in boys and girls classes. This means that my curriculum and teaching has be tailored to working with different gendered groups. The children do come together for my three after school coding clubs (Lego Robotics, Computer Art and Coding, and Making with technology). My plan is to introduce Turtle Stitch to the Computer Art and Coding Club this term.

Outside of school I also run a tiny company called Beyond Scratch, which provides clubs, coding camps, activities and coding support to local children from other schools. The 'Only Girls Allowed' coding club will be exploring wearable technology this term using Arduino Floras and they are also very excited about making creations using Turtle Stitch.

Until I have something more relevant to put on this page, here are a few fun pictures from last year's Beyond Scratch coding camps.