The school year is over and it is a good time to start deciding which extracurricular activities our children will attend from next year. Foreign languages, sports, music… and lots of families have also begun to add technological activities to the list of their favorite after-school programs, since they are a good opportunity to bring STEAM education to children in a playful and fun way.
Programming and robotics activities are cognitive after-school activities, but we can work on these disciplines (which require a lot of effort and perseverance) differently than we would in classrooms within school hours and we need to make every effort to ensure that students have fun while learning and preparing for their future. That is why Codelearn follows its own methodology, which uses gamification techniques to tailor the activity to children and maintain their motivation and desire to learn.
It is increasingly important to have a basic knowledge of programming and learn more about the technology that surrounds us, as it plays an increasingly important role within our day to day and therefore there is more difference between those people who can understand technology, are able to communicate with computers and can take full advantage of them, and those people who are only consumers of technology but cannot use all the resources it offers us to create new solutions or improve existing processes.
Learning programming will be almost essential for children when they grow up and enter the world of work, if we take into account that every passing year more jobs are created related to technology and more professionals with this technical knowledge are needed. However, beyond the long-term benefits this activity can have in the professional field, the most important thing when choosing such an after-school activity is the benefits of learning to code during childhood, especially those provided by the development of computational thinking and how it helps children learn to think and solve problems of any kind.
That is why an extracurricular program is both a fun activity for children and a commitment to the future, as it responds, on the one hand, to the new interests of many children who are passionate about technology and, on the other hand, to a need of training which also has multiple benefits for child development.
The Codelearn Method
Codelearn is a programming and computational thinking school that aims to help children and young people prepare for the future and learn 21st century skills in a fun and age-appropriate way. It uses its own game-based learning method and follows a detailed curriculum that has been developed by IT and Education professionals and is constantly being reviewed and updated.
The school uses an online platform as the main tool, which allows students to progress both in Codelearn centers and at home. The contents are structured in many adventures presented by a universe of fictional characters, and these adventures are divided into chapters consisting of programming exercises which help each student to learn autonomously and earn points that can be exchanged for objects and avatars in the Points Store, as in some video games.
Throughout the year Codelearn organizes complementary activities that serve to work on other transversal skills, such as creativity and teamwork. For example, there are competitions where artistic creations are valued and also individual and team coding competitions, thus encouraging socialization between students both within the same center and among all Codelearn academies.