Thank you to our Coding Kids’ families, for your support and involvement. Coding Kids has had an epic year and it was our first year.

Coding Kids started business on 18 January 2016. Thank you to the two forward-thinking schools that decided to start Term 1 2016. I started Term 1 with before- and after-school coding clubs at Norman Park State School and in-school coding classes at Hendra State School.

Now, almost 12 months later Coding Kids is offered in 15 schools.

  1. Ashgrove State School
  2. Belmont State School
  3. Browns Plains State School
  4. Bulimba State School
  5. Camp Hill State School
  6. Cannon Hill Anglican College
  7. Corinda State School
  8. Hendra State School
  9. Homeschool Groups (South Brisbane, Ipswich and Yatala)
  10. Ipswich Junior Grammar School
  11. Leichhardt State School
  12. Norman Park State School
  13. Oakleigh State School
  14. Seven Hills State School
  15. St. Brendan’s, Moorooka

The Coding Kids programme will be available in 18 schools in Term 1 2017 and half a dozen more schools starting in Term 2.

  • We run 8-week blocks every term, which fits in nicely into a 10-week school term.
  • We offer school holiday code camps teaching children to program in Scratch and Python at every school holiday: April, July, September and December/January.

We delivered coding and robotics professional development workshops:

  • for librarians at Noosa/Cooroy Libraries and Gympie Library
  • for teachers via the Queensland College of Teachers web conference
  • Griffith University’s Cutting Edge STEM – Teachers’ Professional Learning Day

Griffith University’s Cutting Edge STEM – Teacher Professional Learning Day

We went on super fun kids excursions to:

  • Robotic Vision, a robotics research centre at QUT, in Brisbane
  • Holoverse, a virtual reality entertainment adventure, at the Gold Coast

Playing with Nao robot on our visit to the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision

We ran workshops at Fun Palace, a festival in celebration of arts and sciences at the State Library of Queensland, in Brisbane.

Fun Palace: Scratch – Makey Makey installation

I was judge at State robotics and ICT competitions and I got to experience impressive creations from primary school children around Queensland:

  • Robocup Junior
  • Young ICT Explorers

We have seen amazing support from enthusiastic parents and teachers wanting to see their school introduce coding and robotics programmes.

I was interviewed by ABC radio Brisbane.

I was awarded Advance Queensland’s Community Digital Champion:

I also made it to Number 39 in 40 Under 40: Top Young Entrepreneurs Brisbane.

Our team of Coding Mentors is growing. We now have 18 Coding Mentors located in Brisbane, Ipswich, Gold Coast and Logan. A massive thank you to all the Coding Mentors, the students and parents adore you.

I also want to extend a big thank you to:

  • Laura Warrender, an ICT Primary School teacher from Scotland and our Technologies Curriculum Advisor
  • Isabelle Connor and Andrew Zubiri, our Social Media Ninjas who have been wonderfully supportive and helped foster our online community
  • Andrew Cupper, Frank Hart and Billy Cody, our Programming Extraordinaires who have supported the development of curriculum, lesson plans and office IT.
  • Elnaz Karimpoor and Jocelyn Glencross, our YouTube Channel Gurus who have been creating fun, engaging “how to” videos for teachers, parents and students.

Thank you to everyone for your support. It’s been an epic year. I look forward to growing our Coding Kids family and creating more exciting tech events for our children in 2017.

Have a wonderful Summer holidays! See you in 2017.

Cheers,

Emily de la Peña

Developing the next generation of changemakers, innovators and creators

Founder of Coding Kids

Emily de la Pena with a couple of coding kids

 

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