For the second year in a row, OpenUK will organise its Kids Camp in July 2021. This year’s camp includes a 10-lesson course and accompanying digital magazines, just like in 2020. Last year, OpenUK also organised a giveaway when they gave away over 3000 MiniMU musical glove kits to young people, schools and community groups in the UK, which OpenUK hopes to repeat. An ongoing focus of the course will be sustainability, which will also be the theme of the accompanying Kids Competition.
The 10-lesson educational course is centered on the 10 elements of the Open Source Definition, such as Free Redistribution, Integrity of The Author's Source Code and No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups, with each lesson will be based on one. Further substantiating the course is the fact that its digital skills component is matched to the Key Stage 3 of the national curriculum. The content of the 2020 Kids Course is shared under a Creative Commons license.
On the course, OpenUK CEO Amanda Brock said that it will allow the participating kids “to dig deep into open and each lesson will be themed on the Open Source Definition stewarded by the Open Source Initiative which is at the heart of open source and should be an integral part of learning about open.”
The competition will this year be held throughout September. Teams of 4 young people will compete. First, regional winners will be named. This will be followed by the selection of a national winner, to be announced on 11 November at the OpenUK Awards, which take place during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop26). Last year, the singer Imogen Heap presented the prizes, and OpenUK hopes to have a new high profile presenter of the awards.
A future goal of OpenUK’s educational efforts is to create a High School certification focusing, beyond coding, on the core tenets of Open Technology covering open source software, open hardware and open data. This certification is planned for launch in 2022.