Graham Kent

I published a book for my aunt last month

My aunt, Pat Jilks, wrote a book some 15 years ago now about when she walked from John O’Groats to Land’s End. She’d just typed it all out in word and had then printed it on A4 and offered if to various members of the family to read. I’d never got round to it as… Continue reading I published a book for my aunt last month

Windows Clustered MSMQ Service hangs on startup following failover

We were forced to do an unexpected failover on one of our windows 2008 R2 clusters yesterday which hosts a clustered MSMQ service. One of the nodes blue screened following a windows update and so we went over the to the other node. So far so good, but the service didn’t start on the other… Continue reading Windows Clustered MSMQ Service hangs on startup following failover

Let the children convince you to volunteer for code club

It’s happy Thursday today, as it’s code club day! I’m well into the Autumn term of code club at Ridgeway Primary in Croydon, but you can never talk about code club too much (as my friends who I went to dinner with last night would probably confirm!) I’m reminded today that there are many schools… Continue reading Let the children convince you to volunteer for code club

Ridgeway Primary School Code Club 2013/14

I’ll be running the code club at Ridgeway Primary school Croydon again this year and we’re starting on the week after half term. Parents of year 6 have received an email this week inviting children to join the beginners level class. Hopefully later in the year we’ll also be running intermediate classes for children who… Continue reading Ridgeway Primary School Code Club 2013/14

Code club at Ridgeway Primary Croydon – feedback from weeks 3 and 4

It’s 48 hours until week 5 of my first term of code club and I’m just printing and collating the lesson plans. Now seems a good time to write some feedback about weeks 3 and 4 as I learned a lot (as hopefully did the children!) First off it’s important to note that if you’re… Continue reading Code club at Ridgeway Primary Croydon – feedback from weeks 3 and 4

Code Club at Ridgeway School Croydon – week 3 updates

I was preparing for week 3 of my first term in code club, knowing that last week I’d given out a shared login for our club on the scratch website. I thought I’d have a check to see if there were people commenting or looking at the projects that we uploaded last week, wondering if… Continue reading Code Club at Ridgeway School Croydon – week 3 updates

Code Club at Ridgeway School Croydon – feedback from first 2 weeks

As I wrote about last month, following an initial presentation about code club to the year 5 assembly at Ridgeway primary school in Croydon, we’ve now started our first term of teaching and we’re 2 weeks into the course. I wanted to share some feedback about lessons learnt to date. 1. The assembly was a great… Continue reading Code Club at Ridgeway School Croydon – feedback from first 2 weeks

Code Club demo to year 5 children at Ridgeway – questions I was asked

I did a talk this morning on code club at Ridgeway Primary school in Croydon where I’ll be starting up a new code club next term. The talk was a 15 minute intro to the principles of the after school club, with a demo of scratch and an opportunity for the children to ask questions.… Continue reading Code Club demo to year 5 children at Ridgeway – questions I was asked

Code Club in Croydon at Ridgeway Primary School

Following on from my previous post, I’ve had a meeting with Ridgeway Primary School and we’re planning to start up our after school code club in the first week of summer term, running on Thursday afternoons for an initial 6 week trial period. I am crazily excited and enthused about this and can’t wait to… Continue reading Code Club in Croydon at Ridgeway Primary School

Code club in Croydon

I’ve signed up to run a code club at Ridgeway Primary school in Croydon (where my daughter goes) as part of a larger volunteer program which my current employer dotDigital are starting up in association with the guys at Croydon tech city. Hopefully this will start in the summer term. Watch this space for more… Continue reading Code club in Croydon