Because it’s never too early to code

City students will join hundreds from across the world for an hour-long event on coding

As several countries around the world join to host an ‘hour of code’ between December 8 and 14, city students will also be clocking the hour.

The ‘Hour of Code’, a global movement, encourages anyone above four years to spend an hour to get introduced to coding with free resources online.

Aditi Prasad, COO, Robotix Learning Solutions that works with Bala Vidya Mandir school said that around 400 students in classes IV to VII at the school will join the movement on Thursday. “We have been teaching students to use Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s platform called Scratch. On Thursday, we will work on Code.org’s resources aligned with this year’s theme for primary classes and Khan Academy’s platform to introduce older students to JavaScript among others platforms,” she said.

Organised by Code.org, the ‘hour of code’ introduces students to coding. With the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields being male-dominated, the idea is encourage young students, especially girls.

Godwin Vargheese, Director – Development and Operations, TechKnowledge Education that works with schools on robotics education says that though girls and boys are enthusiastic at the time of demo classes, more boys end up registering. “We work with around 25 city schools, of which we have regular after-school programmes in 10. Though we have many girls, boys have always outnumbered them,” he says.

“We will be teaching coding to around 100 girls from an orphanage in Tiruchi in January for a week. We have also started the IndianGirlsCode initiative,” Aditi said.