Digital Making at Home: livestream coding tutorials

Digital Making at Home has begun to livestream coding and maker projects on YouTube. This week, Marc Scott from Digital Making at Home showed how to make a game in Scratch.

Budding coders can follow along the livestream and make the game at home.

What is Digital Making at Home?

Thousands of people have started engaging with Digital Making at Home. They’ve also had kids sharing their projects.

Digital Making at Home is for kids who want to get into making things with technology and need a few pointers. If you or your friends are looking for ideas of how to entertain youngsters or simply want new project ideas, the Raspberry Pi project portal comes highly recommended.

Like all Raspberry Pi projects, the tutorials are both step-by-step and free. Videos explain all about coding platforms such as Scratch and Python, helping kids to quickly catch up.

Young coders rule!

For families with no prior digital coding or making experience, Raspberry Pi staff members explain how they first introduced their own children to coding. Their initially tentative kids soon became confident, independent learners.

Children can use the game-making and coding skills they’ve learned to make their own versions based on their own interests. The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Senior Learning Manager, Marc Scott, related how his son used his new-found coding skills to create a random karate moves generator which helped him prepare for a karate exam.

The projects, designed for all levels of experience, are self-contained and can be completed without much need for parental input, although many people tell of how much they enjoyed working through projects alongside their kids. They can be easily adapted to be more sensory, for example, so they suit learners with autism.

Marc cautions that before kids share their work online, they’re prompted to consider what information they should be sharing about themselves. All schools now teach e-safety, so running through a checklist should be second nature.

Video tutorials

There is a Digital Making at Home blog which sees makers share the progress of their builds, troubleshoot issues that arise, and discuss ways to express their creativity. New instructor-led video posts are shared each week enabling viewers to code along with others. Subjects include making games and storytelling with code. Parents and carers can also sign up for tailored age-specific content via email sent bi-weekly.

People can sign up for Digital Making at Home here.