2025-09-20 –, Space 4
The transition from visual programming to textual programming can often be difficult as students struggle with both programming concepts and syntax. This session will introduce the Hedy platform which has been designed to make the introduction to textual programming to be a fun and rewarding activity.
Many schools and teachers around the world want to teach their students programming. Initially this is often done with playful tools, ranging from the Bee-Bot robot to Scratch. After using such tools, students need to move to more powerful, real-world textual programming languages, like Python so they can create games or other applications.
Python however is hard, because it requires learners to learn complex programming concepts and syntax at once. Hedy overcomes this by providing a platform to allow students to explore concepts in a simple and fun way. Hedy is free to use, open source, and does not require any software to be installed on the device. Some key features include:
- Hedy is gradual, so you can learn one concept and its syntax a time
- Hedy is built for the classroom, allowing teachers to fully customize their student's experience
- Hedy is multi-lingual, you can use Hedy in your own language
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Anthony Harrison has been developing and delivering mission-critical applications for over 40 years where he held various roles in software, systems and cyber engineering.
He is the Founder and Director of APH10, and co-founder of SBOM Europe, and is a leading source of expertise in Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and has been developing open source software actively for many years, particularly related to securing the software supply chain.
He is a mentor for the Google Summer of Code for the Python Software Foundation and Manchester CoderDojo teaching students Python.