People throughout the world are taking new and innovative approaches when it comes to trying to engage youth in coding education. For example, BBC is giving away micro-bit computers, according to TechCrunch. Steve O’Hear of TechCrunch covers this in a recent article titled “In Bid To Get British Kids Coding, BBC To Give Away 1 Million ‘Micro Bit’ Computers.”

O’Hear writes, “In a move that will bring a nostalgic smile to some British kids (and teachers) of the 80s, the BBC has announced that it is to produce a new educational mini-computer — codenamed the ‘Micro Bit’, a play on the broadcaster’s original ‘BBC Micro‘ computer — and will give away 1 million devices to British school kids aged 11. It will be distributed nationwide from autumn 2015. The new hardware project is part of the BBC’s wider ‘Make it Digital’ initiative to inspire ‘a new generation to get creative with coding, programming and digital technology,’ as the UK attempts to fill an anticipated ‘skills gap’ in the country’s growing digital economy. The move, which sees the BBC partner with over 25 organisations to develop the Micro Bit, including chip-makers ARM and Nordic Semiconductor, Microsoft, and Samsung, is also interesting in that it seems determined to address issues that caused controversy when the original BBC Micro was released.”

Meanwhile, watching live streams of people coding is becoming a major trend all over. Venture Beat News’ Chris O’Brien discusses this in a recent article titled “Watching live streams of people coding is now officially a thing.” O’Brien writes, “Across the Internet, sites are popping up that let people watch other people code for hours and hours. Indeed, live streams of coding are gaining enough momentum that there’s even a virtual conference being organized this weekend by some folks via Reddit. Internet video in general is exploding. But this latest, and seemingly unlikely, phenomenon comes on the heels of Twitch’s big success. The San Francisco-based company proved that there was a massive audience of people who were eager to spend hours each day watching and learning from other people’s game play. That led Amazon to acquire Twitch for almost $1 billion last year.”

While trends and contests can certainly be effective in getting the attention of youth, tutoring from experienced coding teachers is the best way to master coding. With CodeRev Kids, that’s exactly what you get. We have a wide variety of spring, summer, and afterschool programs that focus on subjects such as robotics, app development, and video game making.

At CodeRev Kids, we customize our programs for individual students to make sure the lessons are both thorough and engaging. Our students learn Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. For more information, check out some of our different class options.

For whatever youth coding education needs you might have, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!

One of the lasting images from the Facebook movie The Social Network is Mark Zuckerberg donning headphones and going into a deep zone every time he started coding. Many of us know the feeling. Music is a great tool for getting into one’s groove (no pun intended), after all. One developer is taking that a step further with an album specifically for coders. Phil Johnson of IT World examines this in a recent article titled “Music to get you into the coding groove.”

Johnson writes, “Carl Franklin, a professional musician and software developer, recently wrote, produced and released an album titled Music to Code By. He funded the album with a successful Kickstarter campaign that he ran last summer. Music to Code By consists of three tracks, each 25 minutes long so they fit in with the Pomodoro Technique that some developers (and others) use to manage their time. The album is currently available to download for $18, or you can order a CD version (and also have access to the download) for $20… I asked Franklin about the connection between making music and writing software, and whether one helps with the other. He felt the two have more in common than most people probably realize. ‘I can see how certain aspects of music – notation, practicing, expression, etc. – are all means of manipulating abstractions, much like language and very much like software development.’ The album, on which Franklin did all the performing, took him a little over 5 months to complete. What was the biggest challenge of writing music for people to code by, I asked? ‘The biggest challenge was dialing back my instinct to make real music. This had to fade into the background. It couldn’t distract the listener, but it couldn’t be boring either. That was a particular challenge that I think most musicians would have found maddening,’ Franklin told me.”

This looks like a great tool for youth to utilize when they’re practicing coding on their own. However, to get the most out of it, a student will need tutoring from an experienced coding teacher.

When it comes to coding education, no one does it better than CodeRev Kids. We offer a wide variety of after school programs, as well as spring and summer programs, that allow students to study robotics, web development, app making, and more.

Our programs focus on Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Each lesson builds upon the last and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. By doing this, the entire curriculum is customized.

Whatever youth coding education needs you might have, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!

More and more people are coming together to enjoy their love of coding with others. This has taken on the form of a library coding community in the case of a couple of middle school teachers. Gina Sipley and Mercer Hall of EdSurge talk about this in a recent article titled “Turn Your Public Library Into a Kid Coding Community.”

They write, “As lifelong teachers, we assumed the place where we’d feel most comfortable would be in a traditional class setting, so after careful research we signed up for a Back-End Web Development course at General Assembly. While a lot of information was presented during the 10 weeks, what we didn’t anticipate was how important a variety of hybrid learning experiences would be toward helping us truly master the new programming language. After a mixture of classroom lessons, online tutorials, and tutoring sessions, we stumbled upon what many NYC programmers deem the Holy Grail: Hacker Hours. Hacker Hours, a term coined by Aidan Feldman, is a place where programmers of all experience levels gather to help one another with their coding projects. We were so impressed by both the welcoming nature of the participants and the empowering process of intergenerational peer-to-peer instruction that we were eager to bring something similar to our own local community of teenagers. Libraries offer the perfect setting for Hacker Hours since we consider them to be local incubators. We recently piloted a series of free Hacker Hours for teens at the Franklin Square Public Library on Long Island, New York. We organized our meetups over the course of two days in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment and welcomed sixteen students. Pitched to children ages 13-18 in the Franklin Square community, the gathering welcomed anyone who wanted to learn programming basics and build a working web app.”

If you’re looking for instruction from experienced teachers who makes their lessons not just informative, but fun, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. Our mission is to provide children with exciting, confidence-building experiences with technology.  Our curriculum covers everything from the basics of MS Windows to each step in programming, app development, game development, and robotics.  Children have fun and build confidence with our program, as well as learn valuable skills that allow them to explore their creativity and build important cognitive skills in the process.

We partner with schools throughout California to deliver a formal, K-10 technology curriculum. Our curriculum integrates common core standards in the computer lab environment and even offer programs geared to specifically teach math and science while teaching and integrating technology.

Whatever youth coding education needs you might have, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!

Alex Rozier of Seattle’s KING 5 News couldn’t put it any better than when he wrote, “There are more tech jobs out there than there are qualified people to fill them. That goes double when it comes to code writers.” This is the opening sentence of a recent article titled “Seattle coding school promises you’ll get a job offer.”

Rozier looks at the importance of coding and how schools are making it more of a priority because of the tech job market. He writes, “Coding instructors know that the talent gap is big. That’s why Seattle’s Code Fellows promises you’ll get a job offer within nine months of graduation, because they know there are so many companies looking for this type of employee. Code Fellows opened up in 2013 and has already graduated 340 students. They say that the average salary for their graduates is $75,000 a year. ‘We’re taking people who have raw talent on their own and we’re transforming them into great software developers that can fill the talent gap,’ Code Fellows CEO Kristin Smith said. Smith said learning code is similar to lifting weights. Once you get a basic idea of how it works, the only way you’ll get stronger is if you keep practicing. Smith said they are seeing people of all ages trying their hand at software development.”

Another school has gone as far as to make coding mandatory. Kayleigh Skinner of The Hechinger Report explores this in a recent article titled “Jackson charter school to require coding.” She writes, “Students at Reimagine Prep in Jackson will learn a valuable skill during their first year, one no other school in the state requires students to study: coding. Coding is a process used in computer programming with languages of its own. HTML, JavaScript and CSS can all be used to create websites or applications on a computer. This will be a new concept for students in Mississippi. Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses are not popular here: In 2013, just one student in the entire state took the Advanced Placement exam in computer science. In 2012, just 12 percent of students in Mississippi earned a college degree in a STEM field, slightly below the national average of 14 percent for the same year.”

At CodeRev Kids, we understand the importance of teaching children coding so they’re prepared for the future. We offer a number of spring and summer camps, as well as after school programs, providing lessons on everything from robotics to web design to app making.

At CodeRev Kids, our curriculum is not only fun, but is also extensive, covering everything from the basics of MS Windows to each step in programming, app development, game development, and robotics. Children have fun and build confidence with our program, as well as learn valuable skills that allow them to explore their creativity and build important cognitive skills in the process.  These skills will be valuable in the workplace, in college, and in their futures.

Whatever coding education needs you might have, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!

Conventional wisdom tells us that in order to teach coding, teachers and their students need a computer. After all, that’s where they will be doing all their coding. However, that might not be entirely the case, according to Matthew Farber of KQED’s MindShift. He addresses this in a recent article titled “No-Tech Board Games That Teach Coding Skills to Young Children.”

Farber writes, “There are several digital games designed for kids as young as 5 that turn coding into a fun activity, such as Kodable and Scratch Jr. But some game designers are going further back to programming’s fundamentals by creating physical games that can’t be found in any app store… Another board game that captured imaginations, and major crowdfunding on Kickstarter, is Robot Turtles, which teaches basic coding concepts to preschoolers. Unlike other children’s games (think: Candyland, Chutes and Ladders), the mechanic of play does not rely on luck. All cards are face up and the players work together cooperatively to win. A child can build cognitive skills by playing Robot Turtles because when a child plays, or ‘programs,’ a card, he or she is applying logic, according to Bill Ritchie, CEO of ThinkFun, which published the game. ‘Robot Turtles is a great example of what coding means for a preschooler,’ Ritchie explained. ‘It is about sequencing instruction by instruction, and then being able to recognize the consequences. It’s a mental framework that is appropriate for a preschooler.’ In other words, Robot Turtles helps growing minds think about thinking.”

According to Farber, many of these games revolve around giving the student opportunities to learn from their mistakes, rather than simply correcting them and telling them what they did wrong. Farber writes, “Rather than correcting a child’s mistake, the adult is instructed to simply make a beeping sound. The child Turtle Master can then tap on the “Bug Card,” a round card adorned with a ladybug. After announcing “Debug,” the child can adjust his or her set of commands. Here, failure becomes iteration.” As anyone with some basic coding experience knows, sometimes you have to work out a solution by utilizing your problem solving skills rather than any set answers.

At CodeRev Kids, we understand the need to develop a student’s problem solving skills so he/she can be a confident, successful coder. This is why we provide a number of after-school programs and summer camps with instructors who specialize in making learning not just informative, but fun. Unlike many other programs, ours are customized for each student. They begin when your student arrives and end when he/she leaves.

If you’re looking for a thorough, engaging coding education experience for your child, your best bet is CodeRev Kids!

Most of us agree that the youth are the key demographic that needs to be reached with coding education. They’re the ones entering the workforce that is more demanding of skilled laborers by the day, especially workers with technical skills like coding. Different states are going about reaching youth in different ways.

For example, in Utah, lawmakers just approved a bill to fund computer coding classes. According to Morgan Jacobsen of KSL, “SB107 would allocate just more than $2 million for the Utah STEM Action Center and the Utah State Board of Education to approve and purchase computer coding software programs teachers could use to teach the skill, which is in high demand among employers in the state and across the nation, according to bill sponsor Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper… Up to $1.5 million would be used to license computer coding instructional software for schools, and $320,000 would be used to provide professional development for teachers. The bill would also require the STEM Action Center and the State School Board to report back to the Legislature on how successful the program becomes. The bill doesn’t recommend any particular source for instructional software. Instead, several programs would be selected on a competitive basis. Some schools that are already using free software to teach the skill could allocate the funds to professional development instead, Stephenson said.”

Meanwhile, in Boulder, Colorado, one firm is using an apprenticeship program to tackle the problem. According to Gloria Dickie of the Daily Camera, “Located in Boulder’s core, Techtonic Group is a software development company with clients that range from the Denver Center for Performing Arts to Disney to FedEx. But while its clientele may be impressive, it’s Techtonic’s programmers who truly set the business apart. In early 2014, CEO Heather Terenzio grew concerned about what she saw as a gap in the workforce. Where were the minorities and the women, she wondered, and the high school dropouts? So Terenzio set about to establish an apprenticeship program that would allow disadvantaged youths to enter the coding world without hitting the barriers they would encounter at other traditional institutions.”

At CodeRev Kids we believe we can best tackle coding education with after-school programs and summer camps taught by instructors who focus on both being informative and fun. We even customize our classes for each of our students because we understand everyone learns differently. CodeRev Kids has a variety of after-school programs options including robotics, game development, and interactive programming.

If you’re looking to give your child the most informative, as well as engaging, coding education experience, no one does it better than CodeRev Kids!