During this week’s Dutch school holiday, 30 children participate in the Space Camp 2014 in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The Space Camp programme is filled with activities and games, like cooking in space, building rockets and visiting the Space Expo museum of the European Space Agency. During the camp, the aspiring little astronauts learn the skills they need to actually go into space when they grow up. And let’s not forget the skill that is essential for working in space or astronomy: computer coding! In the future this will even be a must-have skill for most jobs.
This Thursday 1 May, the motivated students set up camp at Leiden Observatory, where Universe Awareness hosts a Coderdojo event. Coderdojo is a worldwide project in which volunteers teach children how to write code for a computer game, build a website or app or even programme a robot! It forms a great way to teach children the fun of technology and the use of computers, not only to play video games but also to code and design.
Coderdojo is an ‘open source’ movement that is run by volunteers who love to spread their knowledge about coding and know how important it is to bring children in contact with coding at an early age. There are now clubs in 43 countries, teaching more than 10,000 children to write computer programs each week. Since the project is open source, every Coderdojo event is different and can be organised by volunteers in many places all over the globe. The essence of each event is still the same, though. It’s all about learning to code, meeting like-minded new friends and creating awesome stuff!
Share:
