User groups.................
Pupils, projects and primary school learning.
Les Pounder goes back to school and has family fun at Makersphere.
When thinking of technology, St Mary Magdalen’s Catholic Primary School, Penwortham near Preston, may not be the first place that you think of. But on July 15th the school was full of tech! Makersphere was created in 2016 by Lara Lowe, a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator who wanted to create an event where parents and children can learn how to use the many different technologies on offer. Over the course of the day there were sessions using the Raspberry Pi, Codebug, micro:bit to create many different projects. Classrooms became hubs full of eager families, children showing parents how they can hack their ideas to life. One of the best sessions was Codebug, where children built circuits using crocodile clips and LEDs. This session started out as an introduction, but within ten minutes the children were leading the session, showing their parents how to make cool projects, and shaping the session into a crazy laboratory!
But there are times when you need to relax, and Makersphere had its very own arcade, this was provided by various Raspberry Pi powered arcade cabinets, and a market had stalls from Preston Hackspace, papercraft, and Tony Hughes from Blackpool Makerspace who demonstrated Linux running on laptops from between two and ten years of age! Tony also managed to help families try out Linux, and converted a few to trying out Linux Mint and MX Linux, which is really good on low-power machines!
Makersphere attracted 300 people to the event, it helped families to learn more about the technologies used and expectations for our children in primary school. This family fun day has once again provided the people of the North West with a fun, inventive and informative event that shows how accessible technology can be. Roll on 2018! http://makersphere.org.uk