Surprising as it might be, I really like writing. So much so that I chair a charity that promotes writing and have created countless resources to help writers.
It has recently come to my attention that the kids where I live are massively talented and very imaginative. Furthermore, after running four days of back-to-back children’s workshops on an Arts Council grant, I learned I rather like teaching our younger writers.
I also learned that four days of back-to-back day-long workshops almost killed me. Not metaphorically either. My health suffered a bad hit. After all that work, I was just happy I had roped in some amazing assistants who finished the race while I slowly suffered from complete exhaustion.
Which leads me on to my sister Shaz. She has started a new project to teach Dance, Theatre, and Drama to the home education community. Her site H.E. Theatre Kids was something I helped her set up. I did not charge her for this because (1) she’s my sister and (2) the last two days of workshops would have killed me had she not been there to step in and be amazing.
That was when my baby sister said something profound. Why not offer my client parents the chance to have their kids learn your skills of writing and coding. Hell, yes! Although not at a crippling week-long burnout.
I went and registered hekids.co.uk so our new collective could set up things like moodle, email addresses and workspaces for said teaching. While doing all this I learned that our mum, also a teacher had just started to learn to use Moodle for teaching adults. I guess this teaching lark just runs in the family.
I figured that with all the resources I had created for Thanet Creative and Author Buzz UK, I probably had a full-on writing and selling books course more or less ready to go.
I’ve been putting that together all day and learning how to use Moodle. A task that required more Googling than I am used to needing. Nevertheless, I have set up my first course on Learning with Matt. The first – and currently only course – is called Creative Writing free-form learning. You join up, pick and choose what tasks you want to undertake and when, and there is a big old forum where you can all help each other learn.
You will learn how to write short-form, novels, and even how to use blogs and social media to sell you writing after it gets published.
What I need now, before I inflict my first ever Moodle on teens and pre-teens are some adults to come along and give it a try. For a limited time, you can jump in, join for free, and take part at no charge at all. All I ask for is honest feedback. Go here if that sounds good.
