The <goto> Foundation has teamed up with e-skills to create the #techmums interactive workshops where mums can learn enough about IT to be able to not only understand what your children are learning at school but to have a deeper understanding of it so that you can help the kids with their homework. Additionally, the workshops will cover Social Media and help you understand what is and isn’t safe for you and your family when you’re online. We’ll go a few steps further, too, so that you are confident at home and at work using a computer to exploit the world that the internet brings to your fingertips.

All the workshops take place at your childrens’ school. You’ll get to meet teachers and training providers but also a network of useful local businesses, and of course, other mums like you.

You’ll come away from the workshop with a special #techmums certificate, accredited by e-skills, plus ideas and inspiration to get to grips with the World Wide Web.

You can find out more here: #techmums

#techmums is proudly supported by:

Thanks to @Jon_P_Cape for the poster

Over the last few months I’ve been working with various fab people to get The <goto> Foundation up and running. Being an academic, setting up a non-profit organisation is not something that I’ve got a lot of experience with, and that’s my big excuse for why it has taken me such a long time ;)

On the positive side, I have learnt a ridiculous amount this year, about setting up organisations, the non-profit sector, and a lot more besides. I’ve also learnt quite a bit about myself, which has been “interesting” too. I now know that I’m very patriotic, very passionate about computer science, and very good at overcommitting and wearing myself out amongst other things. I’ve also learnt that I’m very lucky to know so many amazing, clever, kind and giving people :)

So, I decided to set up The <goto> Foundation at the end of last year to

“make computer science more meaningful to the general public, generate interest and excitement in computing and help to create a tech savvy workforce”.

My blogpost from last November tells that story in more detail: http://drblack.posterous.com/the-foundation

Since then I have spent almost every waking moment trying to work out how to make this positive change happen. It has not been easy and I’ve at times felt that I’m not the right person to do it. I thought it would take me a couple of months to get it all going, and here we are in August and we are still near the beginning of the journey. Gah!

Anyway, I decided to knock all the self doubt I had on the head when I reached the grand old age of 50 a few weeks ago. I now have to admit to myself that I really am a grown up and I should stop worrying about stuff and just bloody get on with it ;) Doh!

So anyway. The <goto> Foundation….where are we?

Well, we have a business plan, we have a better idea of what we want to do and how, and we have held our first event in partnership with IntellectUK: #gototech – which has been a fabulous success :))  BBC News reported on the Raspberry Pi part here and Computer Weekly reported on it here, do watch the video to hear the excitement of everyone involved in a one day workshop at St Matthew’s School with Raspberry Pi, AppsforGoodCDI and Miles Berry at Roehampton Institute. We got 90 7-9 year old kids, their teachers and parents very excited about computing, it was a fab day. Read the blogpost about it.

So anyway, where are we now and why am I writing this blogpost? Well, I need your help. I have spoken to loads of great people over the last few months who have given me lots of ideas, support and feedback. We now have a business plan for <goto> that includes our manifesto and ideas for what we want to do and how we are going to do it.

This is the part where you come in….. we really want your feedback on our business plan. We are looking for about £70k in the first instance to really start ramping up <goto> and want to know what you think about our ideas.

We have posted our business plan here on Google docs please feel free to comment on the doc or send me your comments at sue at gotofdn dot org.

If business plans aren’t your thing (and after the last few months I’m not sure they are mine ;-o) and would like to help out in some way then please do have a look through the plan to see what type of activities we will be getting up to and then get in touch to offer what you can, be it advice, a donation, a lead for corporate sponsorship or some in-kind support.

Please sign up for our newsletter, follow @gotofdn on Twitter and like us on Facebook and chat to us there too with your ideas on how we can make this change happen.

If you know anyone who might be able to help or advise us, especially in how to bootstrap the organisation, explore and create our business model, advise us on crowdfunding, help us set up large, national scale activities or just give us bucket loads of cash then please introduce us!

Our manifesto is below. Please let us know what you think and if you can help. We really look forward to hearing from you, thanks very much for your support :))

The <goto> Foundation

Computing and technology is utterly pervasive throughout our world today, but public understanding of technology remains very poor, public perception of computer science is often negative, and many people struggle with or avoid technologies which have the power to help them hugely in their daily lives.

The <goto> Foundation aspires to rebrand computer science, raise public awareness and knowledge of technology, and enable everyone to use, benefit from and enjoy the powerful computing systems in our lives today.

The <goto> Foundation will catalyse rapid change in these areas, through direct strategic action.

<goto>’s aims are to excite, engage, empower and enlighten.

We want to bring together existing projects, people and organisations working in this field – we’re not reinventing the wheel – and <goto> will connect groups with the individuals and resources they need to operate most effectively.

At the same time, <goto> is attempting something new and unique – to raise the profile of technology with the general public through national scale campaigns and events, taking computer science outreach beyond schools and making it relevant to people’s everyday lives.

This isn’t about getting everyone coding – it’s also about design, hardware, security, user experience and more. It’s about empowering everyone to make the most of the technologies available to them; exciting and enlightening them about the power of computer science and its impact on our daily lives; and engaging people with computing and the issues around it.

Thanks to @jamielepiorz for the poster

Debbie Stubbington

Take 90 7-9 year olds, 10 professionals in IT and 3 workshops only ever tried with teenagers before, and for many the expectation would have been a recipe for disaster with disengaged kids who had no idea what was going on!

However, that’s not the way we see things at St. Matthews! Our Year 3 and 4 children jumped at the chance to experience the wonders of coding and making things happen in ways that they hadn’t experienced before.

The Raspberry Pi was a great success. Who knew that this tiny thing could do so much? This jumble of boards, solder and wires was actually a computer just like our beloved new laptops. More to the point the children suddenly saw that missing out a fullstop could have dire consequences if this was in a piece of Python code.

‘Apps for Good’ gave the children the chance to create their own app. They thought of an idea and acted out the situation so that they could really get to grips with what was needed, before they created their wireframe. So now they not only see the point of punctuation, but they have extended their vocabulary! For certain, we all know that “An app is just a set of instructions” – to be read in a bored tone as this is just SO obvious to a seven year old, so why don’t adults ‘get it’?

Scratch fever certainly took over the place thanks to Miles Berry or “Mr Berry” to his friends. He wasn’t reminding the children to point their noses and knees in his direction because they were bored, it was just that they were having so much fun that they didn’t want to stop. With their enthusiasm for wanting to make things happen, they didn’t need much telling what to do – they are of the mindset where they just try it and see, and if that doesn’t work then they will try it again!

Today the classrooms are devoid of their visitors, extra tech and film crews and, to the casual observer, it might seem that everything is back to normal. But if you look closely, there is a new spark being fanned amongst our children, a desire to find out more about the ways they can use ICT to do more exciting stuff. They don’t just want to use computers so that they can do what the computer wants / allows them to do. They want to do it their way and make the computer follow them! And we wouldn’t want it any other way!

It really was a great day and we send a huge thank you to everyone involved. This is just the start of something much bigger!!

– Debbie Stubbington, St Matthew’s C of E School, Surbiton, Surrey

The idea was simple. Inspire kids about computer science. Get them interacting with hardware, software and app design.

So that’s what we did.

Pete Wood and his team from RS Electronics and Design Spark brought along 10Raspberry Pis and taught 7 to 9 year old kids how to program in Python.

Debbie Forster and Sat Kenth from AppsforGood got the kids coming up with ideas for apps and helped them through the wireframe and use case process towards making their apps a reality.

The kids *loved* it. The buzz in each room was phenomenal.

We really wanted to prove that young kids can do computer science and not only can they do it, they *love* it. We were right.

It was an inspiring, uplifting day. I’ll write more later, but for now I’d really like to say thank you to the people that made it happen:

Carrie Hartnell and all involved from Intellect
Mrs Stubbington, the year 3/4 teachers and all from St Matthew’s School
Pete Wood and his team from RS Electronics and Raspberry Pi
Debbie Forster and Sat Kenth from AppsforGood
Miles Berry and his team from Roehampton Institute
and of course most of all years 3 and 4 from St Matthew’s School.

You were all awesome!!

Most popular languages/flavours were:

• BASIC 163 votes
• Sinclair BASIC 23 votes
• Assembler 15 votes
• Pascal 10 votes
• COBOL 9 votes
• C 8 votes
• Visual Basic 7 votes

BASIC being so popular may have been to do with the age of the average person reached by the survey 25-34 year old males, I don’t have that information for the actual respondents, but I’m guessing that most people who used BASIC first are probably 35-50? What do you think?

Sites that teach coding like Codeacademy are doing a great job these days, but lots of people my age talk with great excitement about getting their first machine, typing in the code from a magazine and then hoping it would run. Do we need something like that again? Will the Raspberry Pi, Nanode or the Arduino provide that opportunity?