Although we have a load of quite fancy kit in our lab we’re also big fans of technologies and other resources that learners can access freely at home.  We frequently use these as a basis for sessions to get people started.  Quite often, groups continue to learn remotely.

This isn’t an exhaustive list but if you or your young people want to learn outside of TechResort these are a good place to start:

Code.org, and in particular the “Hour of Code” activites are always popular with beginners and quite a few are suitable for kids as young as six.

Scratch is a brilliant block-based language and is a mainstay of a lot of our beginners’ coding sessions.  We often also teach it adults as it’s such a good grounding in some key computing concepts.  It runs on an online platform, using a browser or can be downloaded and run on your computer.  Also used by schools, we reckon that learners get the best of it from the age of about 7 or 8 upwards..

Sonic Pi is a music-making coding language that takes just a few minutes to start learning but can have you creating layers of sophisticated loops as you hone your skills.  We use for people aged about 10 and up.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation makes loads of resources freely available on their website.  They provide all the curriculum for Code Clubs but lots of other stuff besides.  If you have a Raspberry Pi computer at home and you want to get more from it – this is definitely the place to start.

Python is a language often used a learnng language but, like Scratch, it’s a very practical and useful language in its own right.  It comes as standard in most Raspberry Pi operating systems but it’s also available for Windows, MacOS and other plaforms.

Blockly is a language which is similar to Scratch in that it’s block-based so helps you learn without tripping you up with spelling and syntax problems.  The BBC micro:bit has a Blockly interface, too.

3D design and printing is really popular at our sessions but you don’t need very expensive software to do some basic 3D designing at home.  For absolute beginners we use Microsoft’s 3D Builder which is part of Windows 10 (although sometimes it takes a bit of digging or downloading to find it) or we use AutoCAD’s TinkerCAD which is an online tool so you don’t even need loads of computing power.

There are lots of free resources for microcontrollers like Arduino (which we use a lot), BBC micro:bits and the Particle range of Internet of Things controllers with a coding platform –  but, obviously you need to purchase the controllers in order to use them.

The Stykz animation application has been around a long time and takes a bit of getting used to, but it makes fun animation films and is available for several operating systems.

Our main bit of advice for anyone exploring coding and digital making is to embrace experimentation and getting it wrong (yes, really).  We all learn much more from unpicking and fixing our mistakes:  debugging is a core skill that we all need to develop.

Mostly – have fun with this stuff!