Moonhack and Code Club Australia

The world is changing so rapidly, there are many jobs of today that may not even exist in our children’s future! Even now, a modest boost in tech skills can add more than 30% to one’s salary! So, how do we, as parents, best prepare our kids for the job market of the future? Coding for kids is certainly a hot topic. In this podcast, we will talk about one of the best-kept secrets in coding-world: a FREE Code Club initiative. This year, Code Club Australia has run Moonhack with an aim to get over 50,000 kids coding around the world over a 7-day period, 20-26 July, 2019.

WITH TECHNOLOGY EVOLVING SO QUICKLY, TELSTRA FOUNDATION’S CODE CLUB INITIATIVE AIMS TO HELP PREPARE OUR KIDS FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE, TEACHING THEM INVALUABLE SKILLS IN A FUN AND ENGAGING WAY. WHILE LEARNING CODING, CHILDREN ALSO DEVELOP IMPORTANT SKILLS IN CRITICAL THINKING, PROBLEM-SOLVING AND MATHEMATICS, WHILE FOSTERING CREATIVITY, CURIOSITY AND CONFIDENCE

Jackie Coates, Head of the Telstra Foundation

What is Code Club Australia?

MumsDelivery interviewed Jackie Coates, who is Head of the Testra Foundation, for our new Unperfect Parent Podcast. We found out from Jackie that Code Club Australia is a nationwide network of free, volunteer-led, after-school coding clubs for kids aged 8-12. We also learned that they have available curriculum and training for not only teachers, but also freely downloadable by parent volunteers. MumsDelivery was really impressed that these resources and the Code Club initiative are freely available! Among many other things, Jackie mentioned that there is a great 50:50 mix of girls and boys participating, which makes us very happy, especially considering the gender gap in STEM-related jobs. The interview also touches on the fears that some parents for their kids, that coding may add to their already high level of ‘screen-time’.

Listen to the interview with Jackie below, or scroll to the bottom of this post for the transcription:

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Moonhack and the Moon Landing 50th anniversary

Powered by the Telstra Foundation, Moonhack 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. It’s all about capturing the imagination of Australian students, improving their digital literacy and preparing them for jobs of the future.

Running from 20-26 July, Moonhack was set to be a world record-breaker, led by Australian kids and Code Clubs all around the world. Taking place in homes, schools, libraries and community clubs, Moonhack has seen students take part in a space-themed coding exercise to build a space-themed game. What kid doesn’t want to be an astronaut?!

Kids Coding Initiatives

Interest in children’s STEM-related initiatives seems to have exploded in recent years, with Code Camp being one of the most successful to offer coding for kids during school holidays and after-school. Other groups, such as Coder Academy, offer coding bootcamps across a variety of age ranges, from kids to those of us with a few more *ahem* wrinkles!

With so many options to choose from, where do parents start? Well, it depends what is available in your area, but we feel that Code Club Australia is a good starting point. Their website has an interactive map, where you can find a club. And, if you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, you can volunteer and start one yourself!

If you’re interested in getting your kids into a fund STEM activity – check out our guide to the best telescopes for beginners in Australia.

Transcription

Mark:   Mark here. In this episode of the Unperfect Parent Podcast, I’m talking to Jackie Coates who is head of the Telstra Foundation. In this episode we talk about the Code Club initiative, which Telstra Foundation supports and the Moonhack event, which has been happening 20th to the 26th of July and coincides with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Thank you for joining us on the unperfect parent podcast. So, you’re coming to us to talk about the Moonhack. So, first off maybe we’ll get started with what’s your role and how did you get into that role?

Jackie: Sure. Thanks Mark, it’s great to be here. So my role is the head of the Telstra Foundation, which I think is a little bit of Telstra’s best-known secret. We’re a small charity embedded in Telstra and we are looking at initiatives that can help young people thrive online. And a lot of that work involves, you know, stem programs and making sure that young people are still skilled up with the skills that they need for their future work. And I guess my sort of journey into this role, which I just love has been one where it’s how do I marry my interest in technology, which I’m a bit of a geek and also my interest in social innovation, which is sort of the programs that can drive social change. So, I was really thrilled to get this gig and it’s what brings those two worlds together really well.

Mark:   Yes, that sounds really interesting. Certainly, I’m a geek at heart as well so I can certainly relate to that.

Jackie: Excellent!

Mark:   Yes, I think you might have Telstra Foundation being a best kept secret. I really wasn’t aware of it at all until I started looking at your background for this interview.

Jackie: Yes, like we’ve been going for 17 years. (laughs)

Mark:   17 years. Okay. (laughs) A very well-kept secret.

Jackie: Yes. (laughs)

Mark:   And so, I guess what sort of prompted this is that there’s an event called Moonhack and I think, as we are recording this, that’s actually underway at the moment, isn’t it?

Jackie: That’s right. It is absolutely well and truly launched. It’s an event that we’re doing as part of our involvement with Code Club Australia. We power up Code Club Australia and it’s all about… It started a few years ago and it’s really all about spreading the word and getting more kids connected with coding. And it’s a really big initiative that we sort of time around a space event because we know that kids love things to do with space and astronauts and we’ve got the 50th anniversary of the moon landing this year. Really big events being celebrated.

Mark:   Yes.

Jackie: Yes, that’s awesome. And so, what we thought we’d do is leverage Moonhack around that event and really try and raise awareness that coding’s fun. It’s a team sport and encourage kids to complete a project that’s got a space theme, a moon theme, and upload it onto our website and be part of a world record to see if we can get the most kids coding at one time.

Mark:   Yes, that’s pretty cool. I mean (laughs) my number one career aim when I was a kid was to become an astronaut.

Jackie: So good! (laughs)

Mark:   Yes. So, how long has this been running? Is this like the first time or has it been run before?

Jackie: Yes, no, we’ve run it. That started in 2016 so it’s been building. When it first started, it was just a little Australian initiative. 15,000 kids did it I think from memory and we’ll building up over the years.

Mark:   Oh 15,000 is that not little.

Jackie: Well 35,000 last year, which was just awesome and from every country. We’ve got kids in Croatia who’s uploaded and registered. Kids in Japan. So, it’s one of those things that really highlight type coding is this universal language that really connects us all. And that’s one of the most charming things about I think in this program. It is something that kids can do together and it’s really sweet.

Mark:   Yes, that’s really cool. So I guess when I think about coding, and unfortunately it’s a bad stereotype but you can kind of get this image of the programmer hunched over their keyboard late at night in isolation a bunch of pizza boxes around them and things like that. But it’s really not like that, is it? So, could you expand a bit on the sort of teamwork aspect of that. How does that work with coding?

Jackie: Yes, for sure. So what we’ve found with the code clubs, we’ve got like 2000 of them all around Australia, is they are very much about collaboration and making mistakes and learning through mistakes and sharing what you learned with the person next to you. It’s really sort of built these sort of skill sets that I think people really do need for their future work, which is problem solving. Logical problem solving and collaboration. So, that’s one of the beauties of learning how to code. It’s almost not so much about the programming skills. It’s actually about what happens while you program and how you program. So, I love that aspect of it. And I think, when you look at who’s doing Code Club, we’re really pleased to say we have 50% girls and boys split, which is a really nice thing because I think there is that perception that this coding is often a male geeky kind of pursuit. But we’ve got just as many girls getting into it as well and the kind of things they’re doing at making games, they’re building little websites, they’re coding the little raspberry pis to do things their computers do at home and they’re really just being curious and having fun and learning as well.

Mark:   Okay. How does it work in terms of…? How guided is it? Do the kids sort of come up with their own ideas for a project or are they sort of helped along in that by some facility?

Jackie: Yes. Code club is really just a network of volunteers who for free provide the Code Club in a school or a library and they use our lesson plans. And typically, these people are not wizards in any way in terms of technology. There are people like me who just, you know. I’m a mom who knows really not much about programming but I’ve run a Code Club and you just follow the lesson plans. And what tends to happen, it’s a little bit chaotic at the beginning where everyone’s learning, but then you’ll find some kids, you know, there’s always that kid that just really gravitates to it and gets it and then wants to help everyone. And they sort of become the teacher in the club if you like. And that’s what I love about it. It just sort of shows those leadership skills coming through in unexpected places. It’s not all about being the footy hero or the netball hero and I think that’s a really lovely thing.

Mark:   Yes. I think something like that. (laughs)

Jackie: Yes, me too. (laughs) Not being a sporty kid myself. But we’ve got plenty of sporty kids in Code Club too, which is great. It’s really a great model because if a kid wants to do their own game, they can. You can take these lessons as far as you want. You can go off and do your own thing or you can stick to the plan. It’s really a choose your own adventure.

Mark:   Okay. That’s cool. So, in terms of, I presume you need some equipment to do this. What do the kids have available to them when they go to the Code Club?

Jackie: Yes. That’s why we encourage them to be in schools and libraries because typically they are places that have laptops. We have actually had some Paper Prototyping Code Clubs where they are both in connection. People learned some basics of programming just without being online, which was really interesting. But typically, you just need access to computers. You can share a computer so I put a couple of kids around and just download the projects from the website.

Mark:   Okay. So the kids involved in the Code Club, will they be doing this like just going along once a week or something? Or is it fairly flexible?

Jackie: Yes, once a week. And I think the way it typically works is the volunteer will offer their services one hour a week. Often, it’s before or after school. Sometimes it’s a retiree in a library. It’s just a once a week thing. Some schools find that they run daily Code Clubs because the appetite is so strong and they have a lot of volunteers. So, it really just depend on how many people you can access to volunteer for the Code Club.

Mark:   Yes. Okay. So, I guess one thing I hear from some parents when you bring up, you know. There’s all these great figures about how important stem skills are going to be in the future in terms of the workplace and so on. But then a fear from some parents is that coding and things like that is often associated with being in front of a screen. Kids have so much screen time these days that many parents are worried about having more screen time. What would you say to that?

Jackie: Oh look, I hardly emphasize being a mom myself of a teen and a twin, the screen time is the battle field of family homes. But I think a parent is best placed to judge how much screen time for their child. The way I look at it is I get no more joy in seeing my kids creating with tech, not just passively consuming it. So if I am going to do screen time in my home, I really try and encourage them to use it to do coding and make some games. Make it a creative play because I think if you encourage that quality of screen time, it really will help in the future for them because I can basically hone their skills and it is an educated experience. But I certainly hear that there is a balance that you have to get in your own family around how much screen time. I always take the quality over quantity piece there and really encourage my kids to do coding and animations and build PowerPoint packs and things like that.

Mark:   Yes, I feel the same way. I mean, I’m a bit biased because I’ve got a background in science and I’m always happy to see the kids doing stem related activities. I guess we take a similar approach to it, really try to divide up. Are they using it for consumption or for creation? I think anything that’s creative, it’s just a tool then. I think seeing kids create is just one of the most joyful things of being a parent really, isn’t it?

Jackie: It is. It totally is. It was a revelation to me just with, you know make all these mistakes as a rookie when you’re first parenting your first child. But things like Minecraft, the creative play in Minecraft is just more inspiring. My daughter spends hours building beautiful homes and great buildings and cities. Her imagination is just incredibly displayed on the screen. You just see it right in front of you, which is fantastic. So being able to have those options in the games that they play is really cool too.

Mark:   It is. Some of the things I’ve seen people make in Minecraft. These kids are amazing, isn’t it?

Jackie: Yes, it is. It’s phenomenal. There’s a lot of positive things that happen in that screen time.

Mark:   If parents are interested in getting the kids more involved in encoding, what is available to them? I guess you can talk in terms of Code Club. But also, I guess as a second question, how can parents who don’t feel particularly technically adept themselves help to support kids who have a strong interest?

Jackie: Yes, for sure. The best thing that I did speaking from personal experience is to run a Code Club myself. I think that is the big eyeopener around the value of programming and how to encourage kids and how to plan the journey for your child. So that when you start at the basics with scratch and you can move them through two different types of programming until they are really competent in things that go well beyond my competence for sure. But I think it’s really important to remove that barrier around “It’s so technical”. It really isn’t. It really is just problem solving and logical problem solving. It’s just a new skill and you just have to dive in and learn it. I think a lot of the barriers that we’re finding, even with code being required to be taught in curriculum, a lot of teachers have told us this. They are just a little bit too scared and hesitant to work out how to do it in the classroom. And so, one of the things that we’re looking at is how do we support people better. We’ve made a lot of videos, we’ve got some professional development, and all those resources are also available for parents to have a look at and sort of skill up a little bit more if they feel they just need a little bit more of a notch.

Mark:   Okay. That’s cool. So, there’s a whole lot of resources available to people who want to volunteer for the club.

Jackie: Absolutely. We have online training for teachers and there’s no reason why even if you’re not a teacher, you can access that and see how it’s done.

Mark:   Yes. You mentioned, I mean I’m familiar with the word, but for any listeners out there, you mentioned the term “Scratch”. Do you want to just tell us what that is?

Jackie: Yes. It’s a really foundational basic programming. A program that you can use fun graphics and sort of blocks. It’s sort of a graphical way to teach you the principles of coding. We use that often for people for starting out on the journey and then sort of as they get more competent at that. You can do lots of fun things. You can animate things, make things, squeak and make sounds, and you can make a little game. You can spend a long-time doing Scratch projects. My kids still do them. One of my children still does them. But as they get more sophisticated, they can then move onto different languages such as Python and HTML, which they can design a website with. Or they can look at electronics projects where they might want to build things that their computers do. Or they might even want to just make music with code or do 3D animations and all of this is catered for on the Code Club websites.

Mark:   I hope you don’t mind but before the call, we were just talking about our own kids and that. So, you have a couple of kids yourself, is that right?

Jackie: Yes, that’s right. Yes, two kids.

Mark:   Yes, and what ages are they?

Jackie: I’ve got a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old.

Mark:   Okay. How have you seen sort of them embrace or be affected by the exposure to coding? Has it been a good thing for them?

Jackie: Yes. I think it has, I mean, I’ve absolutely made sure that they’ve both got a fundamental understanding of programming and what sort of goes under the bonnet of technology so that we never have any technology in our house that we don’t know how it works. So, if we’ve got a Google home, for example, we’ll talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence and data sets and that kind of thing. But I can’t force them, I don’t want them all to be programmers. That’s not my intention either. What I want them to be able to do is at least understand a little bit about it and how it works. And then if they choose to follow it through with a career path, they can. At this stage, I don’t think I have great two amazing coders. [laughs] I think their interests are in different areas, but I really feel satisfied that I’ve opened that pathway. And if that’s an option they want to explore, they actually understand it. I think that’s really important. I think the worst thing would be not to have the opportunity to understand it. That’s what Code Club is about. We provide that opportunity for everyone, particularly the kids missing out in regional and remote Australia.

Mark:   Yes. That access to resources in more remote areas is a big problem, isn’t it?

Jackie: It really is.

Mark:   Is there anything in particular that Telstra Foundation’s doing? Do you know go out and target particular areas?

Jackie: Yes, definitely. We have all our programs to do with what we call Digital Futures. Stem and enterprise skills, innovation skills, robotic skills, they are all geared towards remote and regional communities. And whilst the Code Club Remit is all of Australia, we’re really focusing on those regional communities and making sure that we work with remote indigenous communities for example. We’re working on a project at the moment where we’re looking at some coding curriculum in indigenous language for indigenous communities that speak English as a third or fourth language. So, lots of different ways to get coding into communities that normally wouldn’t access this resource. It’s absolutely a power max thing for us.

Mark:   It reminds me. I think it was a year or two ago, there was a computer game. I think it was developed by some native American people in North America. It was, I guess supported in a similar way to this where they had included a whole lot of indigenous culture into the game as part of a way of preserving that and bringing it forward to the future generations out. So that was quite interesting approach.

Jackie: That’s fantastic. I think that’s one of the reasons why we take this out to regional and remote Australia because the technologies that are being designed now like the next generation. We really just got to make sure that all the programming skills for technologies in the future inclusive and reflect the social and the cultural and the moral standards of societies that we live in and that are really diverse. We were a diverse society. So, I think that’s just fantastic that’s happened and that’s certainly something we are encouraging. We have a program called Indigenous Digital Excellence with the National Center of Indigenous Excellence and we’re working specifically on that problem around how do we get more indigenous coders and developers and indigenous people and young people engaged with technology in a creative way.

Mark:   Yes, that’s excellent. I do want to actually go back to Moonhack and just ask you a little bit more about that specifically. Is it going to happen every year from here?

Jackie: It is.

Mark:   Okay. Is it only called Moonhack this year because of the moon learning time? Or is it always called Moonhack and it just happens to be themed around the moon this year?

Jackie: Yes, we always call it Moonhack. It’s typically around this timing but there’s so many space celebrations. I was actually amazed how many things are happening in space right at this moment. How many people are in orbit and how many rovers are landing here and there. So, it’s a really interesting theme and we can certainly next year do something different. It won’t be the moon landing. It will be something else and we’ll find another wonderful thing in space to latch onto. So, we definitely want to go bigger and better and build it every single year.

Mark:   Awesome. I think this is probably a good place to wrap up. Do you have any final thoughts or any final bits of information you would like to share with parents who might be interested in getting their kids involved in coding?

Jackie: Yes, for sure. Don’t hesitate. That would be my key message. Jump in. A great place to start, and it’s very timely, is Moonhack. So, go to moonhack.com register and have fun doing the project with your child and upload it to be counted in the world record. I think just by doing that Moonhack project, you’ll just see how easy it is to do something fun with your kid around technology creativity. So, I really encourage parents just jump in. Don’t worry about making mistakes. It will be fun.

Mark:   So that’s moonhack.com. And then the other thing that we touched on a lot was Code Club. How would parents get…? Is that sort of a separate thing or is there another website?

Jackie: Yes. The Code Club website, if you go to codeclubau.org. So, just visit the Code Club website and you’ll see there is a map, an interactive map. You can type in your postcode and work out where the nearest code club is to you. And hopefully, there will be one near you and that you can make inquiries and join. If there isn’t, maybe consider starting one in your local school or library.

Mark:   Yes, I’m certainly considering it. (laughs)

Jackie: I’m going to be on your page. (laughs)

Mark:   (laughs) All right. Thanks a lot. I’ve jumped in the deep end there, haven’t I? All right. Well, thanks again, Jackie. Thanks for your time and I really hope that the rest of the Moonhack goes well and keeps on getting bigger year after year.

Jackie: Oh, thanks so much. We’ll let you know how we go at the end of the campaign.

Mark:   Okay. Thanks a lot.

Jackie: Thanks a lot, Mark. See you!

Mark:   Bye!

Jackie: Bye!

Author: Mark Coster