Competitive Computer Coding - Let's play a game and have some fun!

by Luke Schlangen | at MinneBar 14

Telling a student that coding will help them immensely to find a career as an adult… doesn’t seem to motivate or excite. We invest so much time in making these classes fun, but they are still missing something.

We have been running computer classes for elementary to high school students through community education programs like Bloomington, White Bear Lake, Elk River, and 20 other districts. When you see “Computer coding for Kids” in your community education brochure, that’s us. These classes have been really successful, popular, and fun, but sometimes, we still get the question. “When am I ever going to use this?”

Do you know who is never asked that question? A basketball coach. Some kids might not like practice, but they never ask, “When am I ever going to use this?” Because the answer is obvious! You’ll use this at the game on Saturday! You don’t need to know how to shoot a layup for 99.9% of jobs, and yet, a coach never gets this question.

So how do we bring that mentality to code? How can we make code more like a sport? We do it by making code competitive. We create the games that make practice worth it. That’s Code Championship, our new program for 2019.

How do we get kids excited about computer coding? The excitement kids experience while participating in Competitive Coding can be hard to explain, so here is a video.

We're going to be playing the game during this session, so bring your laptop to write some code and join in the action! You don't need to be a developer to join us!

Beginner

Luke Schlangen

I am a Developer Advocate at Google. I am a co-founder of Code Championship. Most of what I work on involves code and education. I believe learning follows excitement.