Our Second Featured Game
First Coding is making a series of Salisbury themed games that will help raise money for charity in the new year. The second game, Coffee Shop Simulator is finished and it featured on local radio this week. Take a listen.
Creative Christmas Workshop
First Coding will be running the popular creative Christmas Coding Workshop next month for 7 to 11 year olds. Using Scratch, we’ll be learning how to make our own animated cracker joke generators. All our workshops are currently being hosted online via Zoom.
It’s time to get festive and creative!
Saturday 12th December 2pm – 4pm
£20 per pupil | Bookings: hello@firstcoding.co.uk
Satchel Classes
First Coding is very pleased to announce that we’ll be hosting coding classes on the Satchel platform. Satchel are the people behind Show Your Homework, something that a number of pupils and parents might be familiar with.
First Coding’s first class was on game design with the key takeaways being as follows:
-
How to push yourself creatively when coding.
-
The best approach to starting a portfolio of work.
-
Ways to get involved with the game dev community and get your game noticed
If you’re interested, the class can be viewed here.
After School Coding Club
First Coding is very pleased to announce that we’ll be starting our popular after school coding club at Bishop Wordsworth’s School after the half term break. The club went online during lock down which was great but nothing quite beats having everyone in the classroom creating together.
Coding Kits Update
First Coding would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped test the Micro:bit kits we’re developing. Whether you tested the kits to destruction, tried to find bugs in the code or were just happy to receive a parcel to check that the kits survived the journey in the post, thank you so much!
After a summer of refining ideas and reworking code, we have a couple of really nice kit designs that will shortly be going into production. The idea was to develop a case for the BBC Micro:bit that could then have accessories fitted to it. The first is a Morse code kit, a fun little kit that includes a Morse code key to attach to your Micro:bit case as well as the Python code to allow you to tap out your own secret messages. All kits come with fully illustrated instructions and you’re encouraged to play with the code to make it your own.
The second kit to go into production is the Micro:bit Code Breaker kit. In our attempt to create an uncrackable code, we’ve incorporated some of the features into the code for this kit, ensure that any encoded secret messages you send don’t run the risk of being worked out.
It has been a very long road getting here, one which has taught us a great deal about product development. The products have gone through a number of versions and as a result there is a huge collection of prototypes. We’ll have to think of a good idea that puts them to good use.
The Radio Interview
You can hear the interview that went out on this morning’s Breakfast Show below. In it I talk about the plans we have to build a series f games in time for Christmas. I can’t believe how much interest it generated, they were even running a phone-in to see what ideas people can come up with. Proof that even the silliest of games can get noticed at times!