A summer school for the future

Publication date: August 30, 2019

By Dorina Marin (EU Code Week Leading teacher in Romania)

Between 9 and 12 July 2019, 25 primary school Leading teachers from 16 European countries attended the EU Code Week Summer School. The activities were funded by the
European Commission and coordinated by European Schoolnet in collaboration with Code.org in the Laboratory of the Future-Future Classroom in Brussels.

The summer school represented a unique training opportunity in which the participating teachers learned how to perform multiple coding and logic- related activities for the schools, cities and communities they are part of and learned how to become an inspiration and guide for their colleagues.

The importance of conducting attractive activities for pupils by using coding in the lessons has been demonstrated during the Summer School. Whether with or without computers, activities based on key questions or clues can lead to introducing coding and logical thinking in disciplines such as history, social sciences and biology.

19 out of the 25 teachers that attended the summer school, work with underrepresented minorities, 5 of them have classes with 15 or more students who are immigrants, and 7 of them teach in classes with more than 20 students who come from a socio-economic disadvantaged area.

This summer school gave participants the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of their students, stressing the importance of coding, not only as an objective in itself but also as a support to learn about and understand the world in a more efficient way, which is useful for the society of tomorrow.

The Summer School participants have contributed to the development of the Deep Dive massive open online course (MOOC) on coding and computational thinking that will begin on 16 September and will be part of the extensive database of teacher resources offered on the EU Code Week website.

By attending the EU Code Week Summer School, I understood the positive impact that the cooperation between education and science, research and innovation can have on our students, especially taking into consideration new technologies in this sense.