Teach Programming CIC
Teach Programming is a community interest company we founded to enable more young people, especially girls, to experience the joy of programming.
Our Principles
Relevance
We believe students should learn things they're actually interested in, so we begin by teaching the fundamentals of HTML by letting students create their own emojis using SVG. They can then make their emoji interactive using Javascript.
Creativity
We think Computer Science should really be thought more of as a creative subject. We like our students to make computing their own, whether it is used for creating music, telling their own digital stories, or making animated solar systems. Etc!
Constructionism
We know students learn best by building things - their own projects that they can show their friends and family, not one off sample tasks reproducing somebody else's code that nobody really understands!
Simplicity
Online computer science materials over-complicate things, so we give as little code as possible, which students can then extend for themselves. E.g. we give the code for circles and colours, and they then code their own circles for eyes, planets, snowmen or even a pizza.
Creative Home Computing due to SARS-CoV-2
Pandemic Creativity
Keep making your own interactive emojis! We have a few laptops and other electronic devices we can lend to students in Bath and as well as online creative support.
Creative Materials
Our HTML & Javascript materials leading from a beautiful emoji to an equally beautiful solar system are widely used in school and out of school, including the 'Who Am I' project at Hayesfield.
Regular Clubs
Saturdays
Guild Coworking Space
An extended Digital Makers for bigger projects and more creativity: interactive emojis and websites, digital story making and games, and physical making with Raspberry Pi and littleBits.
Tuesdays & Thursdays
St. Stephen's CEVA Primary School
For children in KS2 we have developed digital skills, and reinforced the literacy and numeracy curriculum with creative story making, science and other themed activities.
Wednesdays
Hayesfield Girls School
The girls are introduced to coding by making awesome emojis, animated solar systems, digital dancing shoes (which trace out the dancers steps), and whatever else their imaginations come up with!
Thursdays
Beechen Cliff Boys School
For boys in KS3 and beyond, we have used ciphers, games design and web programming to teach coding skills, reinforce numeracy and creative design, and an understanding of computing hardware. Each student's individual challenges can be used as a group plenary.
First Tuesdays
BRLSI-Curo STEM Club
Each month we help out with the BRLSI-Curo STEM Club helping the children make dynamic posters of the science experiments they have performed. It's a really good opportunity to reinforce the scientific learning and to develop the children's creative computing skills.
Past Events
Bath Digital Festival 2019
Saturday 26th October
We ran 3 sessions making Halloween Digital Stories and interactive emojis!
Bath Digital Festival 2018
Saturday 27th October
We ran 2 sessions, as well as our regular Saturday Digital Makers, making Halloween Digital Stories and interactive emojis!
Farnborough Airshow 2018
20th, 21st & 22nd July 2018
We ran three days of coding activities making digital stories and interactive emojis on an aerospace theme. Based at the Altran-UK stand for Futures Day on Friday 20th and over the Family Weekend 21-22nd July introduced students from the ages 4 to 24 to the educational and employment opportunities in creative computing.
St Stephen's Workshops
26th & 29th July 2018
We ran two days of classroom Workshops for the children and teachers in all the classes for Years 3 to 6 at St Stephens. We showed children how to express their ideas with digital story making and how teachers can integrate computing into their existing lesson plans, making Scratch stories based on classroom topics on Greeks, Romans, Suffragettes and making some rainbow geometry for the maths class.
ICSE 2018
31st May - 2nd June 2018
We were invited to submit a paper to the ACM's First Workshop On Gender Equality In Software Engineering describing our activities in the community encouraging girls to take up creative computing. We took it as an opportunity to allow our female engineering colleagues to describe their lived experiences in engineering in their own voices.
Scouts Digital Makers Badge
8th February - 8th March 2018
We ran an three evenings of creative computing activities with the Bath 21st Larkhall contingent making interactive emojis on a Scout theme using HTML and JavaScript. The Scouts made emojis showing the great scout traditions of camping, eating around the camp fire and looking after other people. A few Scouts earned the Stage 3 badge by working on their projects at home between the Scouts events.
Xmas 2017
23rd December 2017
We ran our regular Saturday workshop making projects on a Chrismas theme and included making Christmas cards with physical electronics.
Interfaith Hackathon for Teens
2nd December 2017
We were invited to mentor at the Jewish Interactive event with the theme of making an app for social impact in education. The unforgettable lesson of the day "education is not a commodity, education is a human right" received a standing ovation from the judges! We taught design, coding and presentation skills to a team of four 9 year old boys and the children who came in for taster sessions. The emoji above was made by an 8 year old girl who used her fantastic maths skills to make her beautiful self portrait.
Bath Digital Festival 2017
21st October 2017
We ran three coding workshops for kids for our first involvement with the Bath Digital Festival. The children made digital stories in Scratch or interactive emojis in svg html and javascrpt on a Halloween Theme. So many beautiful stories with beautiful artwork that I forgot to take pictures of!
Cubs Digital Skills Badge
February 2017
We ran an evening of creative computing activities with the Bath 21st Larkhall contingent making digital stories on a Cub theme in Scratch. Most of the Cubs made stories about the great cub tradition of camping and eating around the camp fire. The Digital Skills badge has now been replaced by the Digital Makers Badge sponsored by Raspberry Pi.
Comic Con Bristol 2016
16th April 2016
We were invited to run a creative coding stall at Comic Con especially because our creative coding is something autistic children enjoy! The children's creativity was amazing, the costumes amazing, and our volunteers can't wait to come again!
Xmas Hackathon
19th December 2015
Three Christmas themed hacks to teach the joy of computer science at the Guild Coworking Space, in the Guildhall Bath, making interactive Christmas Trees and Santas in Scratch and JavaScript, and flashing Christmas Cards using awesome rainbow LEDs.
Young Rewired State
28th July - 2nd August 2015
Running Bath's YRS Festival of Code at Eduserve. Activities for the older children were making Android apps for science tours of Bath using BRLSI data, and an emoji that died a horrible dead when the air polution in Bath was too high!
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute
1st April 2015
We have been invited to teach the joy of computer science at the STEM workshops run by the BRLSI Junior Science programme in the Curo boardroom in Foxhill in Bath, and we regularly teach creative coding and littleBits electronics at the BRLSI Junior Science family open days.
LittleBits Internet of Things Hack Day
4th April 2015
Our very first independent hack day. The intended activity was to create our very own Internet enabled umbrella stand, that would connect to the Internet using a cloudBit, check whether it was supposed to rain today, and light up the umbrella stand if so. And a lot more!
Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University
14th March 2015
We were invited to run a littleBits workshop inside the museum as part of their Hooked On Invention Day. The theme of the day related to the 350th anniversary of the publication of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia with demonstrations, talks, and workshops around the topic of invention.
About Us
Danielle Emma Vass
Mobile Application Developer
Danielle is a mobile developer specialising in making both Android and iOS apps, recently moved to London!
