Coding Kids visited Longreach and delivered 5 workshops for students, teachers and parents. With a funding of $2200, over 180 people participated in the workshops held over 2 days in this regional Queensland town.

We are currently operating in 20 schools in South East Queensland. We are building a generation of young digital explorers and adventurers through in-school, after-school and holiday programs. Our curriculum aims to supplement the new “Digital Technologies” and ‘Design and Technologies’ subjects to prepare students to push innovation and to equip them for knowledge based jobs of the future.

We believe that it is important to provide this type of curriculum to students, teachers and parents from regional areas, which is why we have been running workshops throughout regional Queensland.

Longreach Workshops

Making sure our students are learning in a fun and collaborative environment is important to us

In developmental learning, building, tinkering and experimenting with code in a fun environment fosters a growth mindset. We believe that project-based and hands-on experience are the most engaging ways for young learners to explore coding and have them discover the limitless possibilities when they understand the nuts & bolts of programming. We have a team of enthusiastic coding mentors to guide kids in fleshing out their projects.

What we achieved

For $2200, covering the costs of flights, transportation, accommodation, class materials and staff, we were able to share our knowledge and love of coding with over 180 people from regional Queensland. We held multiple workshops for student, teachers and parents alike over the course of two days!

Outcomes

Coding Kids founder Emily de la Pena sharing her passion for code with Longreach students

For most beginners, our curriculum starts by introducing storytelling with digital animation to spark their interest to create their own games. Advanced classes progress to tinkering with 3D design tools and robotics. Kids are also introduced to concepts of circuit boards and work together as a design team to make their projects come alive.

Using the tools to build technology, students learn computational thinking, algorithmic thinking, logic, problem-solving, maths, computer programming concepts, graphic design and user experience. In the process, they are inspired to create a tangible product (they know by heart!) and create a portfolio of projects they are keen to share with family

Videos

Building our first Scratch project!

And check out Charlie explaining his digital artwork project he coded in Scratch

Reviews

“It was a fantastic program that demonstrated to me how to teach scratch. Them coding workshop at our school and Tynker workshop have inspired me to start up a coding club and include scratch and Tynker coding into the technology units done at our school. I tried teaching Scratch last year and felt like I did a really bad job so this has given me the confidence to include it again in a meaningful way for the students.” – Saraya Kirby, Teacher 3/4 K

“I like how everyone made it work so it was exciting and fun.” – Miss R (9 years)

“I like coding and I love that I learned new things I didn’t know about Scratch, Now I know how to make a proper game” – Miss M (10 years)

“I liked that I made my character be controlled by using the left, right, up and down arrow keys. I also like that we got to change our character.” – Mr E (9 years)

“I liked how Emily helped us and showed us how to do it.” – Mr C (10 years)

“It was a little bit hard to make it but still so fun.” – Miss T (8 yrs)

“I liked it when we got to make our own game. I liked when we got to choose our own sprite. Emily taught us how to make our own game. It was funny when we chose our characters because you could make a snowflake move.” – Miss A (8 years)

“I love how you can teach kids how to do technology because if some kids would like to do scratch but sometimes don’t know how.” – Miss H (10 years)

“I really enjoyed how I wasn’t really into scratch but when I went to Emily’s Amazing fun workshop I got back into doing scratch. I really enjoyed it and will most probably go on Scratch everyday.” – Mr S (9 years)

Grant Applications

You can download this grant funding case study here for your own grant applications. (PDF document is saved in Google drive, you may be required to access this document via internet that does not block Google apps, i.e. DET computers.)

If you’re interested in bringing Coding Kids to your town, contact us here . There are various government grants that can pay for us to visit your community. We look forward to hearing from you!

Check out our free teacher download. Learn to code with Scratch in 30 minutes.


If you’re interested to find out more