The best year for Barefoot yet
2018 was the best year yet for Barefoot Computing! For those unfamiliar with the project, we provide free resources and workshops to support primary teachers deliver the computer science element of the Computing curriculum. You can find out more, and access all of our resources for free, by visiting barefootcas.org.uk. Our team here at SWGfL coordinate the delivery of the free teacher workshops, we train a network of over 700 volunteers and then match them to primary schools in their local area. Our workshops introduce the Barefoot materials, allow teachers to get interactive with the unplugged activities and demonstrate how to access the resources on the website.
So what have we been up to?
In 2018, the SWGfL team coordinated over 1,150 workshops in primary schools across the UK, reaching over 16,300 teachers and ultimately making an impact on over 430,000 pupils. This is the busiest year we have ever had! Whilst most of these workshops are delivered face-to-face by our volunteers, 2018 saw us deliver our first online workshop using Skype for Business, allowing us to now reach schools in every corner of the UK. We have reached 28 schools this way, our favourite being Scoraig School, a school with only 6 pupils and one teacher, and only accessible by boat or a five-mile hike. Luckily they had a good internet connection!
20,000 new teachers
We have also launched a series of new resources in 2018, contributing to almost 20,000 new teachers registering to access our Barefoot materials. Safety Snakes was launched in January, in collaboration with UKSIC, and has been our most popular resource to date, with over 2,500 downloads. In this activity, pupils program a Bee-Bot to navigate through a snakes and ladders style Bee-Bot mat, considering online safety scenarios as they climb the ladders and slither down the snakes. Barefoot Goes Wild was launched in the summer term and was also very popular. In this lesson, pupils create their own Bee-Bot characters using our nature themed Bee-Bot jackets and then use these to explore a habitat-themed Bee-Bot mat.
What's next?
And 2019 isn’t looking any quieter. The end of January will see us launch our brand new Barefoot website - barefootcomputing.org and we will be launching another online safety themed resource in time for Safer Internet Day on the 5th February. So stay tuned and visit our website to find out more!
