Networked Stories - From Me to You

On January 24, 2026, I had the opportunity to lead a workshop as a mentor for CoderDojo Schöneweide. While I had previously assisted with a workshop, this was the first one I designed and implemented myself. I would like to share these experiences with you.

With the opportunity to design a workshop, my goal was to pass on knowledge to the participants (or at least ensure that their curiosity keeps growing). The digital world has a lot to offer, and sometimes certain topics receive a bit less attention—for example, how computers communicate with each other. With this approach, I set out to bring this topic closer to the participants.

I gave the workshop the title “Networked Stories.” Making it “playful & educational” was especially important to me, so I tried to keep the structure varied: a brief explanation round, a short game, and then the actual task.

For me, preparation also involves testing and experimenting. In doing so, I ran into initial hurdles with Windows systems (potentially the participants’ personal devices). After consulting with CoderDojo, we decided that we could provide Linux systems for the participants to use instead.

So, I tested the feasibility of my plan on private Linux systems and wrote instructions for the participants accordingly. Important note: Linux is not always Linux—distributions can vary slightly. Consequently, some commands did not work as outlined in the guide. Here, we had to quickly research alternatives live during the workshop.

When participants are learning and doing something new, they often need a bit more support—it was very helpful that many mentors assisted me. To my astonishment, there were also several parents who had fairly good knowledge and helped out at their tables.

In hindsight, I can say there is always room for improvement. My task/instruction sheet contained quite a lot of text—including many explanations (nice-to-know & for reading later). Reducing the text and making it clearer would be a sensible next step. Raising the minimum age for this workshop (which defaults to 7 to 17 years old) might also make sense in the future, as unfortunately there were a few participants who found it a bit too complicated and left mid-workshop.

If interested, any team member can access the materials for this workshop and repeat it after some time with new participants. Technically, things could also be altered, simplified, or updated to current standards.

The first version of the “Networked Stories” workshop was successfully implemented, and I would like to thank the helping mentors who supported me that day and were jointly responsible for its successful completion.

I met new people here, saw how they work together as a team and enjoy passing on their interest in technology & computers to the young generation—as well as the participants (and their parents), seeing how engaged they are and how regularly they take part in different workshops.

I wish CoderDojo Schöneweide and the team behind it continued fun and great success with their work.