Lessons from CoderDojoTo at TPL Annette Branch

On March 25th, Toronto Public Library Annette Street Branch held it’s first CoderDojoTo event. Branch Head Jeffery Toste spearheaded the in-branch initiative and was on-site as a mentor at well attended event. We welcomed 23 new coders, and their parents. We also provided 7 laptops (2 from the library and 5 from CoderDojo Toronto) to students who did not have their own.

Our mentor group was the core team (Ming, Yousif, Tyler, Les) and Jeffery. As we ran the Making A Basic Game in Scratch workshop at the front, it was just enough to cover a table of 4 for each mentor. We made a change to our seating arrangement – switching from row seating looking forward, to pod seating clustering 4 students around a table. Mentors were able to provide better support for more students by spending time with each side of the table, and it encouraged pairs to work together when a mentor was busy with others. Parents were also more engaged as a result of the pod seating allowing them to sit with their learners, and mentors could still get around to everyone.

To continue to run successfully though, we will need to have more mentor training sessions in different neighbourhoods of the city. A West end training session will be booked in early May at the Annette Street Library.

The post Lessons from CoderDojoTo at TPL Annette Branch appeared first on CoderDojo Toronto.