Spark4Kids is offering online GCSE courses for Year 10 and Year 11 students planning to take the GCSE Computer Science exam. The material and topics covered in these courses are mostly exam-board agnostic, applying to all UK exam boards (with a few exceptions which will be highlighted during the course).

This course has an accompanying free Taster Session for you to explore.

This Python Skills 4 DofE course introduces attendees to a powerful, modern programming language that has a gentle learning curve along with lots of useful accompanying documentation. The nature of Python means you can write short programs really quickly, with the platform remaining flexible enough for its use to be limited only by the programmers imagination.

The simplicity of Python, does not impede its application as a serious programming language. In industry, Python is used in many famous organisations including NASA, Digg, Yelp, Google, DropBox, and Pinterest to name a few, and countless experienced programmers and security professionals use Python in their day-to-day work.

Note that these weekly sessions are led by a LIVE!, remote tutor who is able to provide attendees guidance in real-time, along with progress reviews during the sessions. At the end of the course, you will receive a Spark4Kids certificate and a Skills Assessor report will be submitted to the Duke of Edinburgh towards your eventual skills award.

This course has a taster session Python Skills Taster 4 DofE where participants can get a sense of what the full course entails before registering.

This Unity Skills 4 DofE is a game design course for attendees aged 13-17, during which they will complete a number of video game coding and level design projects using the professionally-capable Unity games engine and the MonoDevelop scripting tool. Attendees will learn the basics of coding in the C# language, as well as how to operate the Unity engine to produce polished, fully-realised games.

Attendees of all abilities are welcome, from beginners (who have never written a line of code) all the way through to kids who have prior coding experience.

Note that these weekly sessions are led by a LIVE!, remote tutor who is able to provide attendees guidance in real-time, along with progress reviews during the sessions. At the end of the course, you will receive a Spark4Kids certificate and a Skills Assessor report will be submitted to the Duke of Edinburgh towards your eventual skills award.

This course has a taster session Unity Skills Taster 4 DofE where participants can get a sense of what the full course entails before registering.

This Typing Skills 4 DofE course is for attendees either looking to take their first steps in learning how to touch-type, or looking to improve on their existing typing skills.

Using a gamified approach to learning to type, the challenges start out simple and progressively become more advanced. Using games, levels, badges, stars and leader boards, attendees learn to type interactively, building up their muscle memory and increasing accuracy and word-speed. Good seating posture and hand-placement are strongly encouraged during the sessions, ensuring a comfortable experience all round. Note that these weekly sessions are led by a LIVE!, remote tutor who is able to provide attendees guidance in real-time, along with progress reviews during the sessions.

At the end of the course, you will receive a Spark4Kids certificate and a Skills Assessor report will be submitted to the Duke of Edinburgh towards your eventual skills award.

This course has a taster session Typing Skills Taster 4 DofE where participants can get a sense of what the full course entails before registering.

The Typing 4 Kids course is for children either looking to take their first steps in learning how to touch-type, or looking to improve on their existing typing skills.

Using a gamified approach to learning to type, the challenges start out simple and progressively become more advanced. Using games, levels, badges, stars and leader boards, children learn to type interactively, building up their muscle memory and increasing accuracy and word-speed. Good seating posture and hand-placement are strongly encouraged during the sessions, ensuring a comfortable experience all round. Note that these weekly sessions are led by a LIVE!, remote tutor who is able to provide attendees guidance in real-time, along with progress reviews during the sessions.

You can register for a free Typing Taster 4 Kidsto experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the full course.

The Python 4 Juniors is a gentle introduction to Python – a widely used and powerful computer coding language.

This course is recommended for younger children aged 8-11 who are ready to progress on to text/keyword-based languages after having programmed “block” based languages (such as Scratch). Python is a highly versatile and simple programming language which is used by major companies and organisations such as NASA, Google and Instagram.

Python 4 Juniors is recommended for children aged 8-11 who are ready to progress on to text/keyword-based languages after having programmed using “block” based languages (such as Blockly 4 Juniors).

You can register for a free Python Taster 4 Juniors to experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the full course.

The Python 4 Kids course introduces attendees to a powerful, modern programming language that has a gentle learning curve along with lots of useful accompanying documentation. The nature of Python means you can write short programs really quickly, with the platform remaining flexible enough for its use to be limited only by the programmers imagination.

The simplicity of Python, does not impede its application as a serious programming language. In industry, Python is used in many famous organisations including NASA, Digg, Yelp, Google, DropBox, and Pinterest to name a few, and countless experienced programmers and security professionals use Python in their day-to-day work.

This basic introduction to Python will cover the basic language features, including:

• While loops, Arguments, Variables, If statements
• Coding Arithmetic, Counters, Advanced While loops
• Arrays, Object Literals, For loops
• Function definitions, Drawing, and Modulo

All of this makes Python an ideal first “proper” programming language for those children progressing past the basics of coding.

This course is recommended for children aged 11-17 who are ready to progress on to text/keyword-based languages after having programmed “block” based languages (such as Blockly).

You can register for a free Python Taster 4 Kids to experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the full course.

The Web Coding 4 Kids course is designed for children aged 11-17 during which they will learn how to hand-code HTML, CSS and JavaScript by building a mini-website providing information on a topic of their choice. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are the three fundamental building blocks of all websites on the world-wide web, and this course covers these core fundamentals.

Attendees aged 11-17 of all abilities are welcome, from beginners (who have never written a line of code) all the way through to those who may have a few years of coding experience.

Children who have attended this course in the past can attend again if they enjoyed it the last time: we tailor the coding challenges to build upon topics covered in previous sessions (please indicate previous attendance in booking notes).

You can register for a free Web Coding Taster 4 Kids to experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the course.

Our Unity 4 Kids is a game design course for children aged 11-17, during which they will complete a number of video game coding and level design projects using the professionally-capable Unity games engine and the MonoDevelop scripting tool. Attendees will learn the basics of coding in the C# language, as well as how to operate the Unity engine to produce polished, fully-realised games.

Kids aged 11-17 of all abilities are welcome, from beginners (who have never written a line of code) all the way through to kids who have prior coding experience.

You can register for a free Unity Taster 4 Kids  to experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the full course.

The Games Design 2D 4 Kids course introduces kids to designing and coding 2D video games for computers, mobile devices, and the web.

Using the Stencyl tool and it’s built-in visual programming language, users drag and drop code from a palette of “code blocks”, snapping them in place and nesting within each other, enabling the creation of advanced logic from basic components.

This course is recommended for children who are skilled with block languages (such as Blockly) and want to branch into creating games for web, mobile and desktop using professional-level tools.

You can register for a free Games Design 2D Taster 4 Kids to experience a session before deciding if you want to register your child for the full course.