• Posted 02-Nov-2020

EU Code Week marks another successful edition with more online courses and activities

EU Code Week took place this year from 10 to 25 October. Teachers, students, NGOs and tech companies in 83 countries participated in the grassroots initiative organising more than 69,000 activities as part of Code Week so far. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, this is at the same level as 2019.

Code Week kicked off with a virtual event on 8 October, during which guest speakers like Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Mitch Resnick, MIT Professor and creator of Scratch, Linda Liukas, author of 'Hello Ruby' and many more shared their views on programming in education. 

Code Week goes online

To facilitate the participation in the initiative even in the times of pandemic, the EU Code Week team introduced online events and remote teaching opportunities for students, teachers and parents. Their efforts were not in vain since 69,000 activities have been organised to date, despite the challenges that the organisers faced, such as shifting from personal meetings to online workshops and remote teaching. The level and the variety of many of the activities they organised were outstanding, proving that the initiative keeps growing in quality, as the volunteers behind it develop experience and knowledge over the years.

However, these are not the final numbers. Code Week participants can continue to support digital education and spread digital knowledge throughout the year, and the concluding results will be announced in January 2021.

When reporting activities all organisers earn a certificate. Teachers also have the chance to be awarded a Certificate of Excellence if they participate in the Code Week 4 All challenge and build alliances with at least nine other educators in their country or in two other countries until the end of the year.

Numerous opportunities remain available

Many more opportunities remain available for coding enthusiasts, like the #CodeWeekDance for those who wish to combine coding and robotics with dancing. Code Week also offers free tutorials and lesson plans for teachers, available in 29 languages all year around. Two of them, Coding for Sustainability and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, have been newly added this autumn. Both teachers and parents can follow the Coding@Home video series that shows how to practice coding and computational thinking without any device (unplugged) at home or in school. 

And to lift the spirits of students and teachers, the EU Code Week team has introduced a new virtual game, called #CodeWeekTreasureHunt. The game, developed by Prof. Alessandro Bogliolo and the community, teaches about the history of computer science in Europe through a series of quizzes and coding challenges. 

Even though the peak days of EU Code Week 2020 are behind us, many more activities and opportunities will be organised and made available in the weeks and months to come. The EU Code Week community will keep putting their efforts in bringing digital literacy and programming to everyone. The ninth edition of EU Code Week will take place from 9 to 24 October 2021.

Source: Digital Single Market News (https://bit.ly/384Esgy)