Happy EU Code Week – Kick-off
Publication date: October 8, 2021
EU Code Week kicked of yesterday with a striking event and launched its 9th edition. Packed with creativity and inspiration, not only from Annika and Jakub – our enthusiastic hosts- but from each student, ambassador, expert, and teacher who joined the web streaming.
So many new opportunities start with a line of code: a website to support a local business, an app to stay healthy, a game to play with friends.
Yes, coding might seem complex, and at the same times fixes problems and can even awake the artist within.
We are not exaggerating when we state that “A simple line of code can change the world.”!
Code Week is as a grass-roots movement that emerged out of the desire to make programming more visible, to show young, adults and elderly how you bring ideas to life with code, to demystify these skills and bring motivated people together to learn. Today, we celebrate creativity, problem solving and collaboration through programming and other tech activities, with millions of people around the globe.
Teachers all over Europe -and in other regions- are including coding activities in their classes to inspire their students, to show them new skills and empower them to create solutions for the world they live in and the world they want to build.
Joining live during the kick-off, Rafael Montero, from Spain, and Sumita Bhattacharyya in Sweden, are using coding in their classrooms and opening the doors of new digital skills for their students. They joined virtually from their respective schools, to explain the real value of including coding in the curriculum.
Sumita affirms that “all teachers should try new things. There is no need to be an expert, together [with the students] we can develop complex things with easy programming. They see the results immediately and they get excited.” Rafael and his high school students say they have fun doing things they never did before, even when they’re not very good with computers, because coding is not too complicated if the teachers help.
And it was inspiring to hear teenagers sharing pieces of advice such as “It is interesting, even if it is a bit difficult,” or “Coding is the future, learning now will be useful in the future.” Some of them even mentioned that the Code Week Challenge is complex, yet a good opportunity for learning.
As the event came to an end, Avanti Sharma joined our hosts to deliver even more motivation and interest around coding and programming, especially among girls and young women who might have an interest in STEM and the tech industry. She explained how at the age of 7 she created her first coding project, a dancing ballerina, and then thanks to her mom’s influence she managed to go deeper into the coding universe.
Her advice to teachers was a strong way to close our launching event and a call for educators all over the world: “I understand their struggle and why they’d be afraid to step into tech, but you have to prepare younger generations and you play such a vital role in shaping the future. The future generations will have to step into a world that will require more and more technology, prepare them not for the world of today but for the world that is coming. “
