Out of school coding groups: Code Rangers and Code Club

code rangersThere have been a couple of interesting developments on the teach-kids-coding front in the last few months.

Code Rangers is a new initiative to teach coding to primary school kids in Sydney. Right now there are classes in Artarmon, Northbridge and Marrickville. Code Rangers runs classes before and after school: The groups are timed to work with after-school-care commitments. Code Rangers is particularly interesting in concept because it has been set up on a for-profit basis: Which says something about the currency that teaching coding is beginning to enjoy. It also means that Code Rangers provides it’s own equipment, venues, supervision and so on. The cost is around $200 for a term.

code clubCode Club Australia launched in May and is decidedly not-for-profit. They just received a grant of around $500,000 from the Telstra Foundation:

Code Club Australia: to help achieve the organisation’s mission to give every child in Australia the chance to learn code through an accelerated “train the trainer” program targeting 500 teachers and prioritising schools in low socio-economic areas. While teaching kids to code now may help solve a future skills shortage, coding also builds kids problem-solving abilities, digital confidence and helps kids understand the world around them.

Code Club groups are all free, volunteer-led and rely on school computing equipment. Hopefully the Telstra Foundation money will allow them to really kick up a gear and achieve their aim of getting a code club into every primary school in the country. For more information on Code Club activities see their website.

These initiatives come from very different directions and motivations; but right now any effort to teach kids to code is to be applauded.

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