Description
The UK's Python community play an active role in computing education in the UK. Why? Because it is through education and learning that we engage with our future colleagues, friends and supporters. It's how we develop and progress as a community. A community involves both formal and informal organisations, expectations of behaviour and processes for making collective decisions. In other words, it's a political exercise. Organising education to promote and sustain our community is also a political exercise: it reflects a certain point of view about how our community should be. In the UK there are several Python community based projects that reflect our shared outlook that our community should be a diverse, collaborative and friendly place. With all this in mind, I will tell the story of one of these educational projects: the BBC micro:bit ~ a device for beginner programmers that runs MicroPython (a million of which have been given to the UK's 11-12 year olds).