Sarah Townson

The club is oversubscribed, and students are selected to attend to maintain the desired balance, including 50% girls, with priority given to young people with additional needs and those who are referred to us through local community groups.

I have very few spaces opening up each term, as the majority of young people choose to continue attending until they reach the end of year 9, with some returning to volunteer with younger students as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Young people select their own projects during this club, working on a wide variety of activities including programming games with MakeCode Arcade, 3D print design using TinkerCAD, polymer clay modelling and stop motion animation, soldering electronics projects, sewing and chocolate making.

I run a successful computing club for Science Oxford, one Saturday a month. I choose a new theme for each month. For example, programming BBC micro:bit self-driving cars, Minecraft with Python on a Raspberry Pi, designing games for Scratch Day, ‘Choose-Your-Own-Adventure’ books for World Book Day, and coding puzzle boxes to answer riddles.

Students attend with an accompanying adult, and they are encouraged to work together as a family. Each month I have a mixture of returning students and new attendees, including a high proportion of neurodiverse young people, so have gained a lot of experience in managing groups of mixed ability and experience levels.

I have recently expanded this club to run a version for older students, so that they can continue to return when they grow too old for the original club and can work on longer term projects, such as coding, designing and building obstacle avoidance robots and air quality monitors.

I organised a ‘Python in Education Day’ mini-conference in 2024, supported with funding from the UK Python Association. I arranged five workshops and networking sessions, so that teachers and informal educators could share ideas and resources.

I have also run workshops at PyConUK, aiming to support professional programmers in preparing for outreach and volunteering. This has included hands-on workshops in collaboration with the Microbit Educational Foundation, and interactive talks on getting started with volunteering.

Since 2021 I have supported IF Oxford's Glow Your Own workshops, which are led by STFC. In 2023 my role was considered important enough that the workshop dates were adjusted to accomodate my after-school club.

I run technical support in the comments, troubleshooting code and circuits, replying quickly and effectively to comments from 25-50 attendees, whilst staying aware of the live content being delivered.

When my Science Oxford in-person clubs were not able to take place during the COVID-19 lockdowns, I adjusted the content and ran them online, as well as started a weekly online after-school club.

In response to feedback from the community, I ended these clubs a few months after in-person activities were able to resume.

I worked on the GLAM Labs project with the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) as their Digital Maker Expert, to help their staff gain the skills and confidence needed to run digital workshops. This involved running training workshops for staff members, co-creating project ideas around their own working environments and collections, and supporting them to run activities with their target audiences.

This began as a funded project in 2018, which I ran in a community centre in a socioeconomically deprived area of Oxford for 9-12 year olds, and I have run many variants since, including a two week experience for sixth-formers which included careers talks and visits to local businesses.

The end goal is the always the same – learn news skills through creative problem solving – but I adapt the content for the age and experience of the group by changing the programming language (MakeCode vs Micropython), design software (TinkerCAD vs Onshape) and challenges (basic algorithms vs programming distance sensors) to ensure that the students learn and succeed, and be proud of their accomplishments.

Improving the basic robot design has also been a fantastic learning experience for me; I learnt to design circuit boards with KiCAD, improved my CAD design skills, and have collaborated with industry experts, inspiring me to continue to challenge myself.

I developed and ran a six-week beginner Python programming course for adults. I started with basic programming on a micro:bit, then moved on to sensors, data collection via a Raspberry Pi and data analysis. For the final two weeks, I supported them as they worked on a project of their choice including a micro:bit morse code decoder, a graphical user interface (GUI) and a micro:bit seismograph outreach project.

At the end of the course, I organised a Raspberry Jam meetup, to introduce them to other local digital makers, and encouraged the attendees to share their projects with them.

Unfortunately Science Oxford no longer runs an Adult Events programme, and so I have not had the opportunity to adapt these resources and re-run the workshops.

I spent years competing in 'antweight' robot competitions - mini 'Robot Wars' with weight (150g) and size (10cm³) restrictions.

I entered two styles of robot. The first being fully 3d printed, designed in Fusion 360, with well researched electronics, the second micro:bit controlled and built from accessible materials and scrap. My aim in entering these competitions was to learn new skills, share design ideas with other builders, and build entertaining robots that start conversations.

In 2019 I hosted 'AWS60' at Science Oxford, organising the logistics of the day and being responsible for health and safety, in addition to competing with my own robots.

I led a team, Sky Fawkes, in Pi Wars 2019 – a robotics competition based around the Raspberry Pi, with a number of remote control and autonomous challenges.

I created the physical robot, designed in Fusion 360 and Inkscape, with both 3d printed and laser cut parts, working with my team to design around the features we needed to succeed in the challenges. I also programmed the distance sensors used in some of the challenges, learning to adapt previously written code to suit our needs, and worked with young people at Science Oxford to program firework animations to run on an attached micro:bit.