Episode: 2641
Title: HPR2641: Liverpool Makefest 2018 - interview with Rachel from the MicroBit Foundation
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2641/hpr2641.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:56:43

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This in HP are episode 2641 entitled Liverpool Makefast 2018,
Interview with Rachel from the microgrid foundation and is part of the series,
Interview. It is hosted by Tony Hume, aka Tony H1212 and is about nine minutes long
and carrying a clean flag. The summary is this is a short interview recorded at this
year's Liverpool Makefast with Rachel from microgrid.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org
forward slash donate.
Hello, this is Tony Hume, thanks for having a public radio and I'm still at Liverpool
Makefast and I've got with me. Rachel Lancaster and what are you doing here, Rachel?
I've come here today to a support Josh, who's of Edgebox and also I'm teaming up with
Les Pounder and we're doing a bit of a microbit hands-on activity.
Yeah, just getting kids engaged. You actually work for the microgrid foundation?
I do, that's right, yeah, I joined them about nine months ago now.
My official title is Head of Product and Channel so I spend a lot of time out in the community,
events like this, talking to educators, learning what it is that we need to do as a foundation
to support them in their teaching. Could you tell us a little bit for the listeners who may
have never heard of the microbit a little bit about what it is?
Yeah, of course, so the microbit board was kind of born, it was made up by a team at BBC Learning.
They recognised that there was a huge shortage of engineers and BBC, along with 29 founding
partners, created the board and they distributed the microbit to every year seven student in the UK.
It was just short of a million pieces. They thought that this was a fantastic way of getting kids
interested in programming and to unleash their own creativity. So the idea was we would give the
microbit to the schools and the schools would then distribute them to the students and the students
would take them home and have their own learning and creativity at home and they could perhaps bring
it back into the school to inspire other students. So the foundation was born after that, so the
foundation is about 18 months old now and the aim of the foundation now is to kind of spread
spread the microbit further and as far as we can by with particular focus on girls and disadvantaged
groups. So our main aim, our number one goal is just to ensure that kids can have their best
digital futures. You said the original distribution of over a million micro bits to schools,
did it actually work in the way it was envisaged? I don't think it worked 100% in the way but it was
certainly a huge success. I think having spoken to hundreds of teachers in my nine months at the
foundation I've learnt that the teachers originally didn't have maybe the support that they needed
to be able to take the micro bits out of the box and have the confidence to deliver a session
on microbit in the classroom. So we've worked really hard over the last year certainly
on producing more sound resources, being more involved in the community and helping support
teachers. So that's where things like Joshy's project with the edu blocks comes in because it
can link into the microbit. Yeah so all these editors are a fantastic help because
edu blocks especially because that's a lovely transition tool so a lot of kids in primary school
will be learning how to scratch from sort of yeah for onwards so kids are going into high school
with a bit of basic knowledge on scratch and making new edu blocks with the microbit
and make the transition from the block based programming into a text based program which is like
Python so it's a perfect tool to sort of help guide the students through that without it being
too intimidating. Could you tell us a little bit about your own background? Yeah it's quite boring
really. I worked for an electronics company for 17 years before joining the microbit foundation.
That's been my only job so I didn't go to college, I didn't go to university. I just decided
that I really wanted to do work and earn money when I left school so I kind of popped into the shop
at CPC and said to Dawn who was the manager at the time of the trade counter I said hey give
us a job and she asked me to come back for an interview and I kind of was there ever since
and I sort of worked through various different departments within CPC and eventually I became the
product manager for education and maker so I was in charge of sourcing new products and sort of
negotiating on contracts and things like that and then that wasn't enough so I then took on the
business development role as well which meant that I went into schools and kind of sold my
products into schools to say you know you need this in your computer science lessons you need
these tools in order to help you deliver that part of the curriculum so I was in delivering
sort of workshops for the teachers and the sales staff that would speak to the teachers as well
how to use a Raspberry Pi and Microbit and codebook and so yeah I already had a good relationship
with the Microbit Foundation and I was looking after the UK distribution for Premier Farnell
who actually manufactured and distributed the board anyway so I kind of a new of the foundation
and I thought the Microbit for me was a kind of whiteboard moment I kind of thought yeah I can
really see kids going for this product and it was really easy to use I've not got any coding
background or engineering background but I thought actually if I can do it and the kids are bound
to be able to do it so yeah I got hooked at that point and I started attending events like
the one that we're at today and going on to Raspberry Jam and getting more involved in the
community and when I was off the job at the Microbit Foundation I jumped at that opportunity to
have even more involvement in this myself and we're just getting a public service announcement
personally you can get around better also in 12 to 1 we've got an e-textiles workshop
first floor and around that block that's what we're going to have a glass flowing out to the front
so I see all sorts of awards starting out and coding conference e-textiles until about four
and all the first floor and glass flowing is that to do? It's kind of amazing, absolutely
I'll probably edit that out I know I've seen some of your own personal stuff around fabrics
in electronics do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah I mean like I said previously I've
not got much of a technical background and so for me using electronics with fabrics or craft
materials is such a simple but fun and engaging activity so you know just learning how to make
an LED light up using a coin cell battery the kids in primary school that's amazing and so why not
add a craft project around that? Why not add a bit of conductive thread and get kids learning
how to sew something and then take it a step further and you know have a have a center on
that as well it's so simple you start off with something really straightforward and you can easily
add to it yeah so the learning skill of electronics but they're also learning skills around
repairing clothes and things at the same time yeah absolutely you know I don't think I mean when
my mum was young she this taught how to sew you know I wasn't necessarily taught those same
skills so kind of it's almost like bringing those skills back and then adding more to it so all
these sort of after school workshop activities that I do at my children's school always involves
LED conductive thread and a bit of felt we'll make it we'll make it animal and we'll add a switch
if we want to we'll add the light sensor or a motor you know if you feel a little bit more energetic
is there any links that we can go to where we could find these on the web? Oh none for my personal
stuff of course there's lots of ideas and tutorials and resources on the my commit website and that
involves a lot of craft activities as you know as well as sort of traditional electronics so
yeah just advice you just go on some my commit website the ideas page it's fantastic
so what what's the web address for that? So that's just mycrabbit.org and then it's forward slash ideas
thank you very much
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