Save the date: EU Code Week 10-18 October 2015 – Bringing ideas to life with #codeEU

Publication date: June 23, 2015

Plan your events now! The third edition of EU Code Week will take place 10-18 October 2015. Millions of children, young adults, adults, parents, teachers, entrepreneurs and policymakers will again come together in events and classrooms across Europe to learn to create with code.

 

 

Supported by the EU CommissionEU Code Week is a grass-root movement run by volunteers who promote coding in their countries as Code Week Ambassadors. 

Why learn to code?

Today we live in a world that has been affected by rapid advances in technology. The way we work, communicate, shop and think has changed dramatically. In order to cope with these rapid changes and to make sense of the world around us, we need to not only develop our understanding of how technology works, but also develop skills and capabilities, that will help us to adapt to living in this new era.

Learning to code helps us to make sense of how things work, explore ideas and make things, for both work and play. What’s more it helps us to unleash our creativity and work collaboratively with wonderful people both near us and all over the world.

Basic coding skills will also be needed for many jobs in the nearest future. 90% of professional occupations nowadays require some ICT competence. Moreover, ICT practitioners are a key pillar of the modern workforce across all sectors of the European economy, with demand growing annually by 3% and the number of graduates from computer science not keeping pace. As a result many open vacancies for ICT practitioners cannot be filled, despite the high level of unemployment in Europe. If we do not appropriately address this issue at a European and national level, we may face a shortage of up to 825,000 ICT professionals by 2020.

Click here to read the full press release by the EU Commission about the EU Code Week 2015.