python

Evaluating resilience & problem solving

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Disclaimer: This is not a formal, rigorous academic study. It is an attempt by a small charity to understand how young people might be benefitting from our activities, beyond the qualitative feedback we receive in-club and from parents.

We began asking young people to complete a resilience feedback form in February 2021. This is voluntary and anonymous to our volunteer mentors. The evaluation form was developed in partnership with University of Bristol student as part of a community engagement placement.

Since then we have collected data on 242 project completions (n=76 young people). Of these data sets, 14 contain >5 data points (project evaluations). The evaluation is not intended to assign an absolute score for a young person’s resilience.

Each snapshot has 3 key pieces of information (4 if you include the timestamp). We haven’t included timestamps as they could be used to identify young people (attendance on specific evenings equating to a particular club session).

The three pieces of information are:

  1. project complexity,
  2. confidence in completing the project, and
  3. support from volunteers in completing the project

Our projects are (roughly) ordered from easy to more complex. This happens across three difficult ‘levels’, White, Yellow, Blue. This general colour grading allows volunteers to quickly recognise the relative complexity of the project the young person is working on, and suggest other projects to undertake.

The null hypothesis is that if our activities are of no benefit, then young people should be less confident / require more volunteer support as projects get more complex.

Fortunately, none of the data sets show this!

There are some interesting profiles that can be seen within the data.

‘Aha moment’

This chat shows an ‘aha’ moment on completion of our ‘Painting with Scratch’ project. This is classed as a starter project, but is actually quite complex. There is an important element of abstraction involved, with a single sprite (the pen) being controlled by several other sprites (the buttons).

The subsequent dip is the transition from White (starter) projects, to Yellow (intermediate) projects. Sentence Creator, and Secret Messages, are both quite complex list manipulation projects in Scratch. However, confidence is maintained and increases with Balloon Pop (introduces cloning) and password generator (more lists and string contamination).

Throughout this journey, the mentor support has been sustained.

Transitioning

This chart shows a young person’s journey from Scratch to Python over nearly 10 months. The project titles are hard to read but the last one is the transition to Python with ‘Hello World’.

The decreasing support over the first few projects suggests that they were making good progress and not requiring additional support. Their confidence remains high throughout. Password Generator, and Clone Wars are conceptually challenging projects, reflecting the increased volunteer support given.

The Memory Game (the second confidence uptick) is often a challenge for young people as there’s an abstraction between the main sprite and the buttons you press depending on the sequence of random values chosen. Once that is overcome, it’s relatively easy to complete and is a great springboard to more complex projects. 

The flat line over the last few projects suggests that the young person’s confidence is matched to the increasingly challenging projects. The uptick on completing their first python project ‘Hello World’, shows a significant increase in confidence on transition to python. This is likely due to their experiences and successes in Scratch previously.

More profiles

As we continue to collect data, we’ll continue to post interesting profiles to demonstration different trajectories through our projects.

DigiLocal People – Bakoto

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Bakoto began attending our original club at Barton Hill Settlement in 2016. She progressed quickly through our projects and ended up coding in Python before her studies meant she had to step away from weekly club attendance. Through her connections at DigiLocal she secured a work placement with a local Bristol technology firm and went on to study Cyber Security at University.

Bakoto was invited to join DigiLocal as a trustee to benefit from her personal experience as a club attendee, a woman, and a person of colour. It is a major decision to be a charity Trustee and we wanted to know why she accepted the invitation

I am a trustee because I believe it’s a great opportunity for me as a young person who can relate to young people. 

Being a trustee for DigiLocal is great as their aim is to assist people from disadvantaged backgrounds, POC/Black. 

For DigiLocal to be able to give the opportunity to them is a great thing 

We are hugely grateful for the knowledge and experiences that our Trustee bring to the DigiLocal. We also see being a Trustee as an opportunity for individuals to grow and extend their expertise, and to gain new experiences. We were interested in what Bakoto had gained from being a Trustee (for the avoidance of doubt, all Trustees at DigiLocal are unpaid and receive no financial benefit from their Trusteeship).

There are a number of reasons of what i get out of being a trustee,

The first reason is connecting with other younger trustees. By inputting ideas for the club and listening to other people’s ideas, we are able to make something great for the young people.  

Being able to work and assist with other communities is what I also get out of being a trustee. 

An example of this is sending out laptops to young people during the pandemic. 

Bakoto coding a Raspberry Pi at our 2017 Celebration event

As an attendee at DigiLocal, Bakoto completed all our projects along with participating a many special events. Trying new challenges, in a safe environment, is a key part of DigiLocal supporting young young people to achieve their potential. We were interested in which challenges Bakoto remembered in particular.

For me, it was transitioning from scratch to python. This was a good challenge as it developed my skills in the end and was helpful while working on coding for my university course. 

DigiLocal doesn’t have a formal curriculum for young people to follow. We focus on developing problem solving skills and building resilience through our fun and challenging projects. Obviously, we hope that young people are learning, and we wanted to know what Bakoto thought she had learned from her time as an attendee with DigiLocal.

I have learned so much!

For example, I have learned to network and therefore find job opportunities and work experience. 

This has helped me develop my career and has a clear idea on what field to specialise in the future.  

Another example is that I have learned how to programme. 

We are honoured to have Bakoto as a Trustee and wanted to hear a little about her future plans post-DigiLocal.

Following from the previous question, I would like to get into the cyber security field, in particular online safety/e-safety. I would like to help people to protect themselves online. 

More success for DigiLocal young people

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DigiLocal is supporting young people to discover and develop their digital talents. We provide young people from under-represented groups in the tech industry with opportunities to develop their problem solving skills and build resilience.

In addition to our weekly community based clubs, we also provide external opportunities such as the European Astro Pi Challenge – Mission Zero.

Mission Zero offers participants up to 19 years old the chance to have their code run on the International Space Station!

External challenges help young people see the real-world application of their club activities. With our support they can, literally in this case, reach for the stars.

Dr John Bradford, CEO, DigiLocal

Teams or individuals write a python program to display a message and take environmental reading on an Astro Pi computer. These messages and readings are displayed to the astronauts as they go about their daily tasks on the ISS.

There are strict requirements that the code run without errors, complete it’s display within 30 seconds, and be efficiently coded.

Each year we support teams of young people to discover and participate in the Mission Zero Challenge. This year we had 6 teams taking part from across Bristol.

“We’ve really enjoyed attending… It’s so much fun. We started using scratch and then moved on to Python, which is more challenging. We specially like the competitions.”

Aycel & Kanzy (aged 11 & 9 yrs)

Each team receives a high quality certificate with a map on the reverse showing where the ISS was when their code ran (and yes, the maps are all different, showing exact times / locations – as you’d expect from a space station)!

About Digilocal

DigiLocal® is an independent registered charity (Reg: 1185746) for the public benefit, to advance the education of young people in the UK from groups that are under-represented within the technology industry, in particular but not exclusively, by supporting free technology clubs. It supports communities to run free tech clubs for their young people. Its mission is to support a tech club for young people with every community in the UK that would like to provide one.

European Astro Pi Challenge

The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It offers students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space by writing computer programs that run on Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Bristol young people on the International Space Station!

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Every year the European Space Agency, with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, sponsor a challenge for young people to write a short python programme to be run on the International Space Station (ISS).

Two specially hardened Raspberry Pi’s have been flown up to the ISS and are in orbit around the planet. The code that young people write is checked to make sure it runs, lasts for less than 30 seconds, and makes use of the various sensors on the Raspberry Pi. It is then sent to the ISS where it is run for the astronauts to see and learn from.

Between January and February BC (Before Coronavirus) we had 18 teams from DigiLocal clubs across the region taking part. They joined nearly 6,500 other teams from across the EU region.

Last year I printed out certificates and awarded them to young people at their clubs. Obviously we can’t do that this year, so I’ve emailed the parents with their child’s certificate.

Each certificate includes their name and their team name, and on the reverse an image of the Earth with the path of the ISS showing the exact location when their programme ran!

And, yes, I’ve checked and the maps are all different.

This year’s teams included:

  • Red Saints
  • Potato People
  • BACON
  • Gryffindor Hogwarts
  • Team Wilburtron mk9
  • epicspaceyesokcoolmeow
  • Space Smiley Face
  • Space Girls
  • Apples
  • yeetfest
  • Potato Squad
  • M&M’s
  • Time Stones
  • epic gamers
  • space
  • Cool Guys On Devices Engineering
  • Team Girls
  • Space Potatoes

Congratulations to everyone that took part and had their code on the International Space Station!

Mission Success!

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Alex @ Barton Hill

Seven teams of young people across the region complete challenge to have their code run on computers in space!

Seven teams of young people from Bristol and the West have completed the AstroPi Mission Zero coding challenge. The challenge is a national programme which offers young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space by writing computer programs that run on Raspberry Pi computers aboard the International Space Station.

Neeti @ Bradley Stoke

The teams, with members aged from 8 to 14, were all members of DigiLocal, a charitable organisation which seeks to bring coding clubs into the heart of communities through a network of volunteer ambassadors. The challenge was running from February this year, with teams submitting entries based on the Python computer coding language that were developed during DigiLocal club sessions. 

This year 5,677 entries were received from the 24 ESA member/associate member states, with 4,621 being run on the International Space Station.  The certificates of completion were awarded to the seven teams throughout the region in June. Each certificate includes the team name, and a fantastic map on the back with the actual location of the ISS when that team’s program ran.

“We’re enormously proud of the hard work these teams have demonstrated. Giving young people access to opportunities they wouldn’t get elsewhere is key to DigiLocal. We do this by supporting communities to run tech clubs for those young people.”

Dr John Bradford, CEO of DigiLocal
Sara & Naby @ Docklands, St Pauls

The AstroPi challenge was part of British ESA Astronaut Tim Peake’s mission Principia (2015–2016) on the ISS. The UK Space Agency and the Raspberry Pi Foundation collaborated to foster young people’s interest in space science and to help them develop computing and digital making skills. For this purpose, two space-hardened Raspberry Pi computers, called Astro Pis, equipped with environmental sensors (a Sense HAT) were sent to the ISS and then used to run students’ and young people’s programs, with ISS crew support.

DigiLocal @ Stockwood Tech Takeover

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DigiLocal young people learning how to control Minecraft via Python on a Raspberry Pi 3.

What to do in the half-term? Tech Takeover, of course!

We’ve been working with Nia at the Bristol Libraries Service for some time and were very happy to help support her Tech Takeover day at Stockwood Library on 16 Feb 2017.

Stockwood already runs a very successful CodeClub so I took some Raspberry Pi 3’s along. We soon had kids building games inside Minecraft using the Python API.

All the kids managed to get a working game running, a couple even completed the extra challenges at the end. The guides were all on the Raspberry Pi’s, I was just there to help trouble shoot syntax errors. Although coding is sometimes seen as a solitary activity, there was lots of social interaction with kids helping each other out; usually before I could get around the table to them myself, which is brilliant!

New tech ambassador helping his mum out with Minecraft & Python.

The focus for DigiLocal has always been supporting communities to run their own high quality tech clubs. The engagement from the young people was evident, one young lad stayed for over two hours and was asking for more Python projects (even ones that didn’t involve Minecraft)!

Stockwood Tech Takeover was unusual for us in that it was a single day. DigiLocal is normally a weekly activity in a community centre, library, or youth group. We work in partnership with other providers to provide the diverse communities across the region with regular, high quality, engagement with high tech.