It’s always a pleasure to represent the UK as the code ambassador, sharing what’s happening with computing education and having the opportunity to learn from the very best educators and ambassadors across Europe and even further afield.
Arriving at the Albert Borschette Conference Centre, Burssels, always brings a chill of excitement, it’s the round congress table, the multitude of different cultures and languages spoken and the aligned topic of young people and their preparedness for their digital futures that is really infectious. Digit<all> is the home of Code Week in the UK, the charity helps schools and communities get involved in Code Week, two weeks of computing enrichment and activity.
Alessandro Bogliolo provided a hugely engaging unplugged activity as an icebreaker for the ambassadors, showing how with just a few resource cards, children could explore algorithms, robotics and concepts such as the CPU clock. The activity enabled two people to plan their routes as rovers over a large areas. It’s this sort of activity that not only provides another resource to deliver but enables collaboration and discussion about how it can be differentiated, how multiple contexts can be used and importantly, how it can fit in the vast and varied curricular across the represented countries. This is what makes being part of the Code Week community so exciting – finding out where other countries are with their computing curriculum and the myriad of approaches with one core objective – developing computational thinking of young people.
Here are just some of my reflections from the two-day event:
Poland – a centralised approach helping so many communities to engage with a core message
Austria – a significant investment in digital technologies such as tablets to develop learning
Switzerland – some incredible initiatives including those around human rights, providing contextualisation
Finland – multi-phased approaches to developing creative computing learning approaches
Romania – highly established and exciting teacher training programmes to disseminate computing knowledge and skills
Hungary – high quality collaboration with industry to enrich opportunities for young people
Code Week takes place from the 14th to the 27th of October 2024 and it’s easy to engage your school or community group:
1. Find some resources to deliver with a group of young people online or face to face:
2. Add your activity to the global map – share the amazing work you are doing to inspire young people:
3. Receive your certificate and be proud to be part of a massive community promoting digital opportunities for children.
If your school or community needs help then you can access grants of up to £1200 for activities during Code Week through Meet & Code and Digit<all> https://www.digitall.charity/meetandcode
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