The MMU student participants will be in school this week working with the six local primary schools as part of the ‘EVERYBODY LOVES ROBOTS’ challenge. (It seems finally that we’ve selected a name for the event – ELR!)

One of the issues we’ve faced is getting people with the tech skills to go into schools. We’ve found that students on computing and engineering courses are reluctant to go into schools, and work with pupils to develop their ideas. There is a stereotype of the lone tech-head, who prefers machines to people. I don’t want to get into this stereotype issue too much because it’s not helpful… It’s important however to recognise the skills that we all have.

(Self-indulgent/ reflective bit: I’m not a particularly (digital) technology person. I’m getting better but it’s from a very low base. I am happy however to go and work with young people, listen to their ideas, potentially look stupid and muddle through. Realising your teacher doesn’t know everything is a powerful lesson in life. Being prepared to not know something in front of a class is part of that process, and it takes courage… at least for the first few times.)

We are however trying to think through ways where we can create the opportunities for people with a diverse range of skills, as in not particularly good with making and coding, to get involved… because at this point that’s what we have. So we’re running capacity-building sessions this week to skill up the student participants in working with Arduinos and making things flash and beep and what not.

Practising Arduino with @Libxx1 for the Hive project @ESRI_mmu @CodeClub pic.twitter.com/z7siL0arYN

— Yasemin Allsop (@yallsop) March 9, 2015

All of this is really what the Hive community is about for us. It’s a network for learning, where we are learning as much as the young people who are the target group, and it’s a learning network, so we’re figuring out how to do this better.

James Duggan