Finally it's time for Pycon! After weeks of avidly watching the website for tickets to go on sale and then weeks of waiting for September to arrive it's finally here!
Day One...
8.45am BREAKFAST!!! Bacon and egg bap thank you very much!
8.45am BREAKFAST!!! Bacon and egg bap thank you very much!
9.30am and time for the opening ceremony which involved Zeth throwing fruit at teachers and Raspberry's at the Raspberry Pi team.
10.30 and it was off to my first session led by Alan O'Donaghue. A great discussion about what Python is and how we can use it in the classroom.
11.20 Quick cuppa and then on to Minecraft in Education with my Picademy graduatee Sarah Zaman. Using Python and Minecraft Pi Sarah let us work through some fantastic resources she's developing with Geocraft - I built a rainbow bridge!
Side note: the most fantastic thing today is that Pycon have started their "adopt a developer" initiative where they've invited developers to attend the education track and adopt us teachers while we're working through stuff. This has been amazing for me - I've learnt so much about how to make my code more concise and organised and why we do things certain ways. Big thanks to the Luke and Natasha from The Bank of America who spent most of the women hours helping me figure out some more stuff in Minecraft!!!
16.00 - TeachMeet time! Awesome news about micro:bit, coding evening updates and a whole host of other discussions!
18:00 time for free beer and canapés before the charity function at 19:30 - a chance to hang out with other education specialists, relax and kick back!
Another aside- I won in the raffle!!! I never win!
Another aside- I won in the raffle!!! I never win!
Day Two...
10.00 a slightly later start today. It's kids day so we're all mucking in to support in various workshops. Lot's on offer here - Astro Pi, Code Club, Physical Computing with Sense Hats and of course I had to help out in the Minecraft workshop! A great workshop run by Martin O'Hanlon programming his Lava Trap game on Minecraft Pi and Python. The kids were really engaged and I found I was pretty confident helping them with their code after yesterday's sessions! Whoop Whoop!
10.00 a slightly later start today. It's kids day so we're all mucking in to support in various workshops. Lot's on offer here - Astro Pi, Code Club, Physical Computing with Sense Hats and of course I had to help out in the Minecraft workshop! A great workshop run by Martin O'Hanlon programming his Lava Trap game on Minecraft Pi and Python. The kids were really engaged and I found I was pretty confident helping them with their code after yesterday's sessions! Whoop Whoop!
12.30 lunch time and then back to the mornings stations for an afternoon of free for all activities. It's been great to see the things kids are coming up with independently and how well they grasp and understand the concepts and rules of the Python language.
Onto the evening 7.30 and we're all seated for the Conference Meal- posh grub, wine and beer and great conversation. I was a little bit anxious about this as they separate everyone on to random tables but the guys I was sat with were lovely and we had some great chats from dating sites to programming in java to how traumatic the 80's ewok film caravan of hope was! After the meal we all hung around finishing off more fuzzy duck brewed beer and catching up with friends/Introducing new friends to the old.
I found the conference really useful, it's given me a lot more confidence in my classroom practice and I feel ready to delve into the world of Python with my learners which before the conference I was terrified of mainly because of their special needs. It's definitely going to be an annual outing for me and part of my development plan for my department and I would recommend that those of you who haven't been do the same!
