Category Archives: Coding Curriculum

Coding Curriculum

The Rarity of Coding Courses in California Schools

CodeRev Kids provides an essential service to California youth in the wake of the lack of coding courses available in schools. Consider a recent article for the Sacramento Bee titled “Coding courses a rarity in California high schools despite tech explosion.”

Phillip Reese of the Sacramento Bee writes, “California is home to Silicon Valley, a hub of technological innovation. The computer industry boasts hundreds of thousands of well-paying information technology jobs, with more on the way. IT departments are now a staple of corporate America. Yet the large majority of California’s public high schools don’t offer dedicated computer science or computer programming courses, according to a Sacramento Bee review of teacher assignment data from the California Department of Education. Information technology is one of the fastest-growing job sectors across California and the nation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects there will be 500,000 new computer and IT jobs in the next 10 years. The state EDD predicts more than 100,000 of those new jobs will be in California. Taking into account vacancies created by turnover, California likely will see about 200,000 IT jobs open up in the next 10 years. Most full-time computer jobs pay more than $90,000 a year, according to EDD figures. And the ability to write computer code or query large databases is increasingly valuable at a litany of jobs not specifically tied to the IT sector. The employment website Indeed.com collects job postings from across the Internet. On Friday, it listed over 1,000 openings within 25 miles of Sacramento that mentioned programming or database analysis as desired core or secondary skills. There is a stark disconnect between those numbers and the amount of computer science education offered in California public high schools. More California high school students take ceramics courses than take dedicated computer programming courses, according to state data. Far more students take art, band, chorus, psychology or French courses than courses devoted to computer science. Students are almost 20 times as likely to take Advanced Placement English language or literature as they are to take AP computer science.”

When it comes to customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our camps today!

Coding Curriculum

Coding Curriculum that Recognizes How Critical the Skill is to the Future Workforce

It’s no secret that coding is the future when it comes to employment opportunities. Some schools throughout the country are taking this more serious than others. Consider a recent article for the Gazette titled “Coding making its way into local curriculum as critical skill for future workforce.”

The author of the article writes, “According to whitehouse.gov, it’s estimated that by 2018, 51 percent of all science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs will be in a computer science-related field, which is why on Jan. 30, President Barack Obama unveiled the ‘computer science for all’ initiative, which commits $4 billion to expanding access to computer science for elementary and middle school teachers and students across the nation. ‘In this generation, just having some idea of how things work on a computer is really valuable,’ said Hannah Buettner, an AmeriCorps member who led a free four-week workshop at the Cedar Rapids Public Library in January that taught kids the basics of coding using a children’s book called ‘Hello Ruby’ — the library will offer the same program again beginning March 1. Knowing how computers work makes kids ‘literate in a world where we’re surrounded by technology,’ agreed Matt Wilkinson, whose 6-year-old son participated in the workshop. Even without a computer, Buettner taught kids as young as 5 years old how to problem solve, recognize patterns and learn from their failures using activities in the book, she said. ‘People might seem shocked that a 5-year-old can learn the fundamentals of programming, (but) I don’t think it’s really age-based,’ said David Tominsky, the lead mentor at Imagination Iowa, a prekindergarten through 12th grade STEM program that encourages creativity, fosters entrepreneurship and helps kids learn to code. ‘A lot of people think they need to be in middle school and high school to work on critical thinking skills, but any kid can do anything you put in front of them if you give them the support they need,’ Hamilton agreed.”

When it comes to customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our winter camps today!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

White House Presents Award to Inspirational Young Coder

Coding is a serious need for students in the United States. By 2020, one million computing jobs will go unfilled in the United States due to a lack of appropriate preparation of our future workforce. Right now, students are graduating from excellent universities without the ability to obtain positions that utilize their expertise, yet someone who graduates from college with a computer science degree is very likely to obtain a desirable and high earning position immediately.

The White House is well aware of this. Recently, President Barack Obama honored a teenager working hard to inspire more young girls to code. The Washington Post took a look at this in a recent article titled “White House honors teenager who inspires girls to do computer coding.” T Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post writes, “Swetha Prabakaran dreamed of becoming a physician, using the power of medicine to heal the sick and to are for the ailing. She studied biology in middle school, but the course of her life changed during her freshman year at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Virginia. She took an introductory class on computer science and learned about programming, becoming fascinated with coding and the intricacies of how to teach computers to make life easier for people. ‘I learned I could help people in the same way with computers and not just a stethoscope,’ said Swetha, 15, a junior from Ashburn, Va. Earlier this month, Swetha was honored at the White House as one of 11 young women named ‘champions of change,’ for her work as the founder of Everybody Code Now! The nonprofit operates in 12 states and has partnerships in India and Ghana to help elementary school students, from kindergarten through fifth grade, learn how to code. According to a White House statement, the Champions of Change program ‘was created as an opportunity for the White House to feature individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities.’”

At CodeRev Kids, we understand the potential for empowerment that coding and tech careers can offer to communities. We customize our lessons to serve all students, no matter their level of expertise.

Our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages. In addition to being highly informative, our lessons put an emphasis on fun. As a result, our students stay engaged and internalize coding concepts and creativity in the process.

If you want to give your child a quality coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

An Ancient Coding Language Called SPITBOL

When we discuss coding, we often talk about it in the context of jobs and competing with other countries. But that’s only part of it. At CodeRev Kids, we embrace the fun and wonder of coding. There are so many wild things people can do. Consider a recent article for Motherboard titled “This 70-Year-Old Programmer Is Preserving an Ancient Coding Language on GitHub.”

Jordan Pearson of Motherboard writes, “Dave Shields is trying to save a dying machine language. Shields has been coding for more than 50 years, and over the decades he’s worked at both NYU and IBM as a research programmer—someone who pushes the boundaries of software design. Shields has racked up a few accomplishments worth bragging about over his long career, including being one of the developers behind Jikes, a Java compiler that was also IBM’s first open source project. But Shields, now 70 years old and retired, is mainly interested in just one thing these days: an obscure programming language called SPITBOL that he worked on in the 1970s and then abandoned for 30 years. SPITBOL is, Shields says, a ‘quick and dirty’ implementation of a 60s programming language called SNOBOL4, written by Robert Dewar. It’s terse and to the point—28,000 lines of code altogether, half of which are comments—and is chiefly meant to manipulate text and symbols, and recognize patterns. While SNOBOL4 was seen at the time as powerful but slow, SPITBOL was built for speed. Now, Shields is trying to keep SPITBOL alive as an open source project hosted on GitHub, all by himself. Since taking the project online in 2009, Shields has been the sole contributor to SPITBOL’s code. So far, he’s succeeded in reconfiguring the language, which he at one time ported for a 60s supercomputer called the CDC 6600, to work on modern Linux and Mac operating systems.”

Once upon a time, Dave Shields got a coding education that forever changed his life. At CodeRev Kids, we want to provide that experience to as many young students as we can.

Our lessons emphasize computational thinking, which ecompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. These lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. As a result, the entire curriculum is customized.

We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there but we also keep the focus on having fun. When the lessons are fun, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you’re interested in providing your child with a customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

National Coding Week Was a Blast!

Coding enthusiasts rejoice! National Coding Week just happened in the UK. Electronics Weekly takes  a look at the event a recent article titled “National Coding Week aims at adult learners.”

According to the author of the article, “Taking place over September 21-27, there will be free-to-attend training sessions across the UK, where people will be taught the basics of coding alongside other beginners with little or no previous knowledge. There is a clickable event map on the National Coding Week website. ‘The key aims of National Coding Week are to encourage adults of any age to learn an element of computer coding, to encourage digital experts to share their skills, and to collaborate, share, learn and have fun,’ said event co-founder Richard Rolfe. ‘If I can learn to code at age 51 then anyone can.’ According to organisers, 52% of adults in the UK said they would feel ‘extremely or very daunted’ at the prospect of learning to code, while 41.3% believed that the older they are, the harder it is to pick up a skill like coding.”

The Bend Bulletin explores the rise in adult coding camps in a recent article titled “Adult coding camps boom as employers seek tech-savvy workers.” Kathleen Gallagher of the Bend Bulletin writes, “With eight employer requests for every student currently accepted into its computer coding classes, Milwaukee-based DevCodeCamp is expanding the amount of space it leases and the number of students it will train. It’s all part of an educational coding surge that is happening in many other cities, as well. This school — the first of its sort in Wisconsin — is taking an additional 2,500 square feet in Ward4 Milwaukee, a co-working space just south of downtown Milwaukee, said founder Jim Brent. The expansion will nearly double the space it occupies. DevCodeCamp, which since June has been running intensive computer coding boot camps here that last for months, rather than years, is attracting pilots, teachers, sales reps and others from a range of occupations, Brent said. All of them are seeking the same thing: good-paying technology jobs with employers who are begging for this type of talent.”

With so many adults trying to catch up with coding, it’s clear that young people who got their education early have a decided advantage. To give your child an advantage in the future job market, your best bet is personalized coding education.

At CodeRev Kids, we customize your child’s lesson plan. Our curriculum emphasizes computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming languages.

While our customized lesson plans provides a thorough education for your child, we also like to focus on having fun. As a result, your child leaves both highly educated and motivated.

For more information, check out our afterschool programs and fall classes!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Leveling the Playing Field with Coding

Structural and systemic inequality are realities of the school and work world. Growth industries like coding provide the opportunities to level the playing field for underrepresented groups. Consider a recent article for the Huffington Post titled “Coding: The Ultimate Equalizer.”

Joel S. Bloom of the Huffington Post writes, “Should ‘coding’ be taught in all-American public schools? We know the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the globe in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. By exposing kids to coding, starting in kindergarten, we give them the tools they need to both compete and make smart life choices in a digital world. Coding is how technology, including software, apps and websites, is created. There are thousands of coding languages, such as JavaScript, Python and SQL, and early exposure helps young people understand and interact with the devices that provide the means to shape our technology-driven culture. Coding is valuable in that it teaches problem solving, design and innovation. It is practical in that it creates solutions to immediate challenges. It is creative in that it allows people to imagine and invent with few boundaries. It is liberating in that one can go from knowing code to owning one’s own company. It is equalizing in that code is not limited by the stigmas humans readily cling to, such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion. But even more exciting, children love to code. That’s why the U.K. last year infused coding into the national curriculum starting at age 5. That’s why there are movements all across Asia to get young people, particularly girls, to code. They understand that you don’t expose young people to code simply to create a bunch of computer scientists. Exposure to coding can open up a love of learning that builds pathways to other critical skills, including many important ones in STEM.”

Even if coding were taught in all public schools, there is still a major need for individualized lesson plans. The only place to find this style of customized education is with a program like CodeRev Kids.

At CodeRev Kids our students learn computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise, making the entire curriculum customized. Even though we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Whatever youth coding education needs you might have, we’ve got you covered at CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Kids Code the Darndest Things

When you give children some space for creativity, it’s amazing what they can do. Consider a recent article for the Huffington Post titled “These Kids Spent 8 Hours Coding And Broke A Guinness World Record.”

Rebecca Klein of the Huffington Post writes, “July 30 was a big day for over 1,000 members of Boys and Girls Clubs in the Seattle area: They learned how to code, and they broke a Guinness world record. A total of 1,337 students gathered at the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for a free coding camp that was also an attempt to break the record for the ‘most people trained in computer programming in eight hours.’ Microsoft approached Guinness when it had the idea to host the marathon training session. Guinness World Records set a benchmark of 1,300 students who had to take part, Microsoft representative Katie Fazzolari told The Huffington Post. The kids participated in coding activities, like learning how to do commands, and had to create a game. They had to demonstrate that they had finished their tasks for their time to count for the world record.”

Cool Mom Tech also highlights youth coding creativity in a recent article titled “9 awesomely cool coding projects for kids using the Dot and Dash robots from Wonder Workshop.” Liz of Cool Mom Tech writes, “Recently, I wrote about how totally in love I am with the Dot and Dash Robots from Wonder Workshop. So it makes me extra happy that they have joined us as as our newest Cool Mom Tech sponsor because, well, we all adore them! (Also, so does every kid who comes over and begs to play with ‘those cool blue robot things’ that have a permanent home in our living room.) What’s even better is that the free Blockly app (iOS and Android) that pairs with the robots has a new update every single week, meaning it’s constantly packed with tons of new puzzles and playful projects that are actually doable without an engineering degree, thanks to an easy drag-and-drop visual coding platform that’s perfect for kids about 8 and up. Maybe a little younger with your help.”

When it comes to youth coding education, nothing gives your child the opportunity to grow quite like CodeRev Kids. Our customized coding education emphasizes computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise.

We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology. With us, children can explore coding through robotics, building apps, designing websites, creating games, and much more.

If you are looking to give your child a quality coding education, look no further than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

CodeCloud Seeks to Help Adults Learn Coding on the Move

For adults trying to catch up on their coding knowledge, it generally requires a class. However, a Seoul/Singapore startup is looking to create an app that allows them to learn coding on the move. E27 takes a look at this in a recent article titled “CodeCloud is an interactive coding platform that gets you a job.”

Iris Leung of E27 writes, “Within the past few years, coding as a skill became anybody’s game with the likes of rap star Will.i.am telling the media that code can help fight global inequality. World leaders also followed suite, with Obama became the first President to write a line of code and Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong recently showed his C++ prowess by sharing his source code for a Sudoku solver. Online and physical coding schools have also cropped up ranging from easygoing interactive platforms like Codecademy to all out four-month curricula from General Assembly. Between the freemium models and fairly steep tuition costs, are students of these programs actually landing development gigs after? CodeCloud, a new interactive coding platform, wants to bridge that gap. Claiming to be the only ‘school’ that that lets users build projects for real companies, the one-year-old Singapore/Seoul startup (and incoming JFDI incubatee) already has had three projects completed included an Airbnb-Expedia mashup and a Bitcoin trading bot that uses machine learning and natural language recognition to predict movements in the cryptocurrency realm… Mike De’Shazer, NYC coding school App Factory Founder and CodeCloud Co-Founder believes that adult neophyte coders need a solution that’s fun, non-committal and actually leads to job opportunities. More importantly, it needs to be a passive way for people to learn at their leisure, which is why CodeCloud’s is plugging away on a free mobile game where budding coders can absentmindly tap away on their daily commutes. ‘The whole thing is very interactive and touch-enabled. Essentially the way it works is you drag words into slots. You start with very simple code then it gets more complex so this is a way that people can learn how to code passively. We found that there’s a huge gap — most adults that want to learn how to code don’t have the time. But they have time on the train or bus, so we realized that we needed to create a mobile experience,’ he said.”

No app, however, can make up for a classroom environment with an experienced educator. At CodeRev Kids, we provide just that, as well as a customized curriculum to give your child a solid foundation in coding.

Our curriculum emphasizes computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. The lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized.

Furthermore, while we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology. Our learning tracks include robotics, apps, websites, and game development.

There is no better place for your child to develop coding skills than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum

From Low-Wage Worker to a Six-Figure Income Coding

Transitioning to a career in coding can literally transform a person’s life. The Tampa Bay Times takes a look at this in a recent article titled “Low-wage workers turn to coding to find lucrative jobs.”

Steve Lohr of the Tampa Bay Times writes, “After Paul Minton graduated from college, he worked as a waiter but always felt he should do more. So Minton, a 26-year-old math major, took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. As a waiter, he made $20,000 a year. His starting salary last year as a data scientist at a Web startup in San Francisco was more than $100,000. ‘Six figures, right off the bat,’ Minton said. ‘To me, it was astonishing.’ Stories like his are increasingly familiar these days as people across a spectrum of jobs — poker players, bookkeepers, baristas — are shedding their past for a future in the booming tech industry. The money sloshing around in technology is cascading beyond investors and entrepreneurs into the broader digital workforce, especially to those who can write modern code, the language of the digital world. Internet giants like Google and Facebook have long fought over the top software engineers in the country, and that continues. But now, companies in most every industry, either by necessity or to follow the pack, are pursuing some sort of digital game plan — creating lucrative opportunities for computing-minded newcomers who, like Minton, want to reboot their lives.”

WSOC examines jobs in the coding industry in a recent article titled “9 Investigates: Companies seek computer coding knowledge.” Stephanie Maxwell of WSOC writes, “Some of the highest-paying jobs in the country are going unfilled, because not enough college graduates possess the skills to fill them. Computer programming jobs are growing two times the national average and in North Carolina there’s more than 18, 000 vacant positions. John Sutton is president of the digital unit at Red Ventures, a technology company in Indian Land, South Carolina. Sutton said despite explosive growth in the past few years, Red Ventures struggles to find employees to fill their coding jobs. ‘The coding and engineering market is probably the hardest market out there today in the USU.S. Specifically in the Southeast, we’ve found it really difficult to attract good talent,’ Sutton said.”

When it comes to providing a quality coding education, we’ve got you covered at CodeRev Kids. With our customized curriculum, your child will receive a solid foundation in coding and have plenty of fun in the process.

At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. With us, students have the opportunity to use their newfound skills to create apps, games, robots, and much more.

Furthermore, while we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

When it comes to quality coding education, no one does it better than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Harvard Scientist Codes a Movie onto DNA

How do you store your data? Flash drive? External hard drive? The Cloud? A Harvard scientist is trying to create a new, more organic storage space: DNA. The Los Angeles Daily News takes a look at this in a recent article titled “This Harvard scientist is coding an entire movie onto DNA.”

Emilie Munson of the Los Angeles Daily News writes, “What if all the information on the internet could be stored in a drop of liquid the size of a quarter? What if billions of copies of that information could be made in minutes? And what if it were guaranteed that all that information would be safe not just for your lifetime, but for millions of lifetimes? Sounds like wishful thinking, right? To Harvard genetics professor Dr. George Church, it sounds like the future. Church is one of the world’s premier DNA scientists. He made headlines recently for his research attempting to bring the wooly mammoth back from extinction. His many contributions since the 1980s include developing anti-cancer nano-robots and detectors for dark matter. Somewhat more obscurely, he’s the inventor of CRISPR, which allows scientists to elegantly cut and paste DNA, enabling the removal of undesirable chromosomes, among other applications. In 2014, scientists in Church’s lab successfully used CRISPR to cure mice of liver disease. Now, Church is focused on doing something no other scientist has succeeded in doing: coding a film onto tiny strands of DNA.”

Munson goes on to describe the process of coding the movie into DNA. She writes, “The DNA that Church is using to store ‘A Trip to the Moon’ is different from that found in living organisms. Instead, it is ‘unnatural DNA,’ crafted to be denser and more robust, perfected for storing high quantities of information. The process of coding the film to DNA is fairly complicated, but in simple terms, it goes something like this:

Every movie image is made up of hundreds of tiny pixels, each of a specific color. Church assigns each pixel a code made up of zeros and ones, for example 001001, based on its color. This code is then converted into adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T), the chemical bases that make up DNA.”

The things we can do with coding are truly fascinating. But no matter what wild things scientists and programmers do, there is one common thread: a quality coding education.

If you want to give your child a customized, high quality coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise, making the entire curriculum customized. We may be known for having the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you’re looking to take your child’s coding education to the next level, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!