Two new courses, run by creative technologists from Bitlink, will be held at Launceston College’s STEAM NGN. “Robots and Drones is a course where kids learn about computer programming and electronics, with a theme centred around controlling robots and drones,” managing director James Riggall said.

“Instead of writing lines of code, which you might see in a movie, where people are doing computer hacking stuff, there’s always that green text of a black background and all that kind of jargon that they spit out. We don’t teach programming in that way. We teach programming using basically an interface that’s almost like a jigsaw puzzle so you can drag elements into a window, you can arrange them in a certain way to build your program up that way.

“In Level Up, kids learn computer programming through game design. We teach the kids how to build their own Super Mario style platformer game. The kids do all of their own artwork, come up with their own characters and story, and then we teach them some programming to make their game interactive and bring their world to life.”

The courses are designed for children aged nine to 12, but Mr Riggall said that was not strict. “If a kid is slightly younger or slightly older, if the parents think they’ll get a lot out of it, then it’s open to them as well.”

Robots and Drones, which runs for six weeks, is sold out. However, it will be run again in the future. Spaces are still available for Level Up, which runs from March 2 to April 6.