A NEW 'coding club' for local children at the Tower Digital Academy in Helensburgh has completed its first term.

The club meets every Saturday morning at the Apple training centre. With coding being a new core skill most children should have access to,The Tower started the club in August for up to 12 children.

The club has gone from strength to strength under the guidance of The Tower’s training manager, Mark Heathcote, and with support from volunteers like Anne Leonardi.

This term, the children have written 25,000 lines of code and four of the members moved to Python.

The club is expanding in 2017 with another 24 places on Saturday mornings.

A coding for adult course called ‘design your own app’ is starting on Wednesday evenings from mid January.

The course trains beginners using SWIFT, which is a new programming language created by Apple specifically for building IOS and Mac applications. It’s powerful and is transforming the speed at which new apps can be written.

A new Tower film and television club for 13 to 17-year-olds will be starting on Saturday afternoons in January.

This club will be for the members of Heritage Academy TV Club and Lomond School TV Club (both URTV initiatives) and will work with local professionals from the film and TV sector as well as lecturers from University of the Highlands and Islands.

To enrol or volunteer, email mark@thetoweronline.com.