While we're very busy fashioning lovely new features into the Codio IDE, we are also trying to make some progress with our parallel project of getting kids (around 14 and over) to code.
Start with a laugh
In case you want to see how the youth of today interact with technology, take a quick look at the 15 second video below.
This was taken from this TedX video Clare Sutcliffe of CodeClub.
But seriously
This video shows just how natural it is for kids to interact with technology. Apparently the modern term for a kid growing up with today's tech is a 'Digital Native'.
The fact is, if we do not teach our kids to code, we are missing a major trick and disadvantaging ourselves and our economies. Teaching them to code should be thought of as a great life skill and one that can reinforce a lot of other school subjects as discussed in this previous post.
To the naysayers, yes, some kids will be better than others, but that applies to driving a car or learning mathematics. The fact is, technology is a life skill and coding plays a central part in every application we use on our computers, tablets and phones.
Progress
We have made a lot of progress in providing a web based platform that is really great for kids above 13 or 14 all the way up to professional developers. By August, it will be ready and free for education, open source and public projects.
What we are trying to do in parallel is devise a way of spreading the word. We are very open to collaborate with anyone, so feel free to email fmay at codio dot com if you have any bright ideas.
More posts on this subject coming.
