Days out diary - child friendly and family activities

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It's not often that you see a Raspberry Pi workshop, a team from (soon to be???) the worlds fastest car and some llamas in the same room, but that's what you'd find at this years school's day at the Malvern Festival of Innovation.

Malvern Festival of Innovation - Raspberry Pi, Llamas, Bloodhound SSC and The Little Pi shop

I was there as a STEM Ambassador helping out on the Raspberry Pi workshops. These were run by the IET, The Little Pi Shop and volunteer STEM Ambassadors from Hereford and Worcestershire. Gordon Hollingworth from the Raspberry Pi Foundation also made an appearance.

During the day we had 6 schools (nearly 100 pupils I think) who had a go at building a simple electronic circuit and writing a game in python. This is similar to something I'd done (on a much smaller scale) with a local high school (Python and the Raspberry Pi GPIO), although this one had less time so involved a bit less coding.

Most of the pupils that attended had never done any Python programming before, but they seamed to enjoy the activity and managed to create their own game. It was a great day and I enjoyed helping the pupils learning programming.

Family day

This day was for schools only, but there is also a family day which is open to the public on Saturday. It's organised differently from the school day, but sounds like it's a good day out. See the link below for more information.

STEM Ambassadors

STEM Ambassadors are volunteers that work using or are interested in the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). It's an opportunity to pass on your enthusiasm and knowledge to children encouraging them to take an interest in STEM. There are lots of opportunities to volunteer with events such as this and a CodeClub I run in a primary school, or helping to support teachers rather than working directly with the children.

Find out more below: