Code Week Netherlands looks back on a highly successful first edition
Publication date: November 2, 2014
This year ECP, the platform for the information society and Kennisnet, joined forces to coordinate a national Code Week and call as many children, youngsters, parents and teachers to action and start coding! According to us coding is ‘not for nerds’; by learning how to code, kids learn essential skills that are of use in all professions. From doctor and designer, to cameraman and mechanic, in the 21st century you need digital skills in any of these jobs.
We are really impressed by the broad national coalition that organically came to us and wanted to support our initiative. With nearly 20 partners, ranging from the Ministery of Economic affairs to the top tech-companies and societal organizations, we can safely say that the sense of urgency to start coding is widespread!
Hightlights of Code Week NL 2014:
- Hour of Code: we organised a special Code Week Hour of Code. Over 300 children from primary schools in all 12 Ducth provinces took part in a simultaneous coding lesson.
- More than 50 local initiatives throughout the Netherlandse organised their own codeweek event
- A 24hour Hackathon was the closing event of Code Week NL. During these 24 hours 100 young talented designers and webdevelopers (between 12 and 25 y/o) competed to make the best app, tool, or website for the assignment ‘Teaching your friends how to Code’. Neelie Kroes herself came to visit us and programmed the launch of the Hackathon!
- A special Code Week toolkit was developed – including a teacher manual for a coding class for 10-15 year olds. It is available on www.codeweek.nl and has been downloaded over 2300 times!
- Major national media coverage: 4 national tv news shows (including best watched with 1,5 mlln viewers), 8 largest national newspapers and, including regional news, weeklies and online news: 135 news outlets in total.
