This repo serves as a single point for us to keep notes on how the outreach programme is coordinated.
- Creating a workshop
- Creating a lesson plan for teachers
- Setting up a RaspberryPi for Digimakers
- Useful Links / Resources
- Digimakers Style Guide
- Github Management
- Assorted Media / Images
The wonderful Caroline Higgins is the member of University staff in charge of the Outreach programme. She can be found in the MVB Office (just ask at the desk) or you can email her (firstname.lastname@bristol.ac.uk). Feel free to email her or find her at any time if you have any questions or are feeling daunted by any of this stuff.
The complete list of people involved in the Outreach programme is rather variable, but certainly the members of the team for this Github group is a good place to start. Most people have also left contact details on the workshops they have created.
For 2016-17, Ed Nutting is the Outreach Teaching Assistant who is helping Caroline coordinate things. Contact him for Github related questions, techy questions or if you would just prefer to talk to an undergrad (3rd year) (Caroline is a lovely person though).
For information on how roles/permissions are assigned/controlled for different people, please see the Github Management page.
Digimakers operates as a loose knit organisation of people who create and run workshops for kids (ages 8 to 18). Members of the Merchant Venturers School of Engineering (undergrads, postgrads, staff, etc) are all invited to help out.
All work is paid per hour - speak to Caroline about the rate for the current year (it's always really good).
There are two ways you can help out:
- Run a workshop
- Create a workshop
These are described in more detail below. We're always looking for more helpers, so please get in touch with the people named above if you're interested in helping!
There's lots of information here to help you get started. If you're feeling daunted or overwhelmed by it, please chat to Caroline or the Outreach Teaching Assistant, they're very happy to help and can walk you through everything in a simplified way.
Running a workshop is really quite easy. Here are the simple steps to follow:
- Take a look down the list of workshops on the website and find one or two you think you might like to run.
(Or, if you're not sure, just ask us for advice and we'll match you to one we think you'll enjoy running). 2. Contact Caroline or the Outreach Teaching Assistant for the current year
Just say you're interested and they email you back (or speak to us in person - Caroline is usually at her desk in MVB 2.19) 3. Attend some really short training.
This is just to make sure you understand the workshop and some advice on how to deal with kids, health and safety and one or two other bits. We'll also sort out DBS (previously called CRB) checks for you at this point too. 4. Show up on the day and run the workshop!
We'll ask you to show up a bit earlier than the event time to set up the workshop and after that, you run it and then clear up.
Workshops are run in two places: Digimakers and Digimakers Roadshow. For more details, see Events below.
We're always looking for more people to create workshops! They're great fun and very rewarding. If you think you'd like to create one and aren't sure where to start, please contact Caroline or the Outreach Teaching Assistant.
We've produced a guide including all the steps, the things you need to know and guidelines that need to be followed (along with a load of tips). Please take a look at the Creating A Workshop page.
This event happens 4 times per year. We book out the top floor of the @Bristol Science Center and run workshops between 10am and 4pm. Helpers arrive at 8:30/9am to set up and leave around 5pm after helping to clear up. This event always happens on a Saturday and you're paid for all the time you're at the event helping out (and you get a nice free lunch!).
Along with the workshops, there is also the Drop-In area. This area is run by usually three to five people. The drop-in provides three functions:
- Laptop/equipment loan : Two people manage handing out and gathering back in equipment (most importantly: laptops)
- Question free-for-all : Anyone attending Digimakers can book a one-hour one-to-one session with one of the non-equipment-manager drop-in helpers.
During these sessions, they are invited to ask any techy question they think of. This usually means they ask for help with a project they're trying to work on but sometimes we get kids who just want to chat tech! Also, parents often ask about how to use things like RaspberryPi and where to find extra resources for their kids to learn from. We have information sheets on hand to help answers these types of question. 3. Free-to-use RaspberryPis : We set up a bunch of RaspberryPis for anyone to use if they desire. (Though we try to limit the extent to which kids just play Minecraft the whole time).
New for 2016-17, we'll be taking our workshops directly into schools. We'll be running workshops as (usually one-off) lunchtime or after school sessions in local primary and secondary schools. Times and dates for these will be announced as we get bookings in.
The website is managed by Caroline and her team. It is developed and maintained by an external friend and he does an excellent job. If you think something should be on the website which isn't, or you spot a mistake or something which could be improved, please suggest it! (Please note, we're not looking for a complete redevelopment using XYZ platform on ABC specialist hosting site... See justifications below ;) )
In order to make life easier (and because it makes sense - see justifications below) we try to make as many workshops as possible into PDF worksheets. This allows us to easily put them up on the site and share them with teachers in schools.
Workshop PDFs are submitted via Pull Requests to the Workshop-PDFs repository. The Outreach Teaching Assistant then reviews the requests, merges them if they're ready and notifies the web admin of any new PDFs. The web admin then updates the website.
There is a specific page dedicated to documenting how we manage the Github.
Yes, yes, we know, you don't like something because of some reason. But honestly, we have thought all this stuff through and taken on feedback from other (more experienced?) members of the Outreach programme, along with kids and teachers in schools (who are our target market).
That's probably not enough to sate your need for answers so we've written a Justifications of seemingly arbitrary decisions page just for you. Please do read it. If you still don't agree with something afterwards, then contact the Outreach Teaching Assistant to have a friendly chat to discuss your idea(s) :)