This free open online course is aimed at teachers and parents of pre-teens to help you encourage children to get involved in programming and coding from an early age. You don’t need to know anything about coding to take part! This course will introduce you to Scratch, a free coding system by MIT. You’ll learn how to use the system and how to teach children how to use it and put their imagination and creativity to work.
Are you a teacher of young learners? Are you involved in young people’s extra-curricular activities? Then this course could be for you. Whatever subjects you normally teach, you and your learners are surrounded by modern digital technology. Much of the technological change has been driven by young people, and their creativity has never been more influential. Facebook, Google, and Youtube were started by people in their teens and twenties. Many jobs of the future will be in information technology, underpinning so many other sectors such as agriculture, tourism, telecommunications, and financial services.
This course will help you to encourage today’s young digital consumers to become tomorrow’s digital creators. It is based around Scratch, a popular system adopted by millions of young learners worldwide as it fosters youthful curiosity, promotes creativity, and provides a basis for lifelong programming learning. You’ll be truly amazed at how fast your learners get up to speed with coding skills! And if you’ve never written a line of code in your life, don’t worry. This course will get you started one step at a time!
This course is offered as part of various Code Week and digital literacy programs designed to bring programming skills to young people across the globe. It will help you take your first steps towards mastering a simple and fun programming language!
We are pleased to offer this course also as part of the following initiatives:
- Africa Code Week
- Refugee Code Week
- EU Code Week
- Code Unnati
Course Content
Unit 1: Introducing Scratch and the Art of Coding
Unit 2: Creating an Interactive Digital Environment
Unit 3: Coding Geometric Shapes and Freehand
Unit 4: Planning and Designing Games
