As programming becomes something more and more kids are learning about, the Australian Code Club has designated a night to get them building together.
What are your kids doing on August 15? It won’t surely be watching a digital transmission of the solar eclipse, as that’s a week later.
If they’re doing nothing, it might be ideal to consider a night of learning and building, as thousands of Aussie students become one big group of programmers on a big night taking place during National Science Week.
The 20th anniversary of that special week of science and technology, August 15 is also the night of the “Moonhack”, a big deal for Code Club Australia, which encourages kids and teenagers to get into coding on August 15, building in various languages with projects found on Code Club.
Occurring all over the world, Moonhack is basically a full 24 hours where kids are encouraged to build, creating programs with a moon theme or following some of the subjects on the Moonhack website, and it will be happening all over the world, starting with kids in New Zealand, the country closest to the International Date Line.
“The best thing about Code Club is that it breaks down the myth that computer coding is hard and complex – it’s actually fun and through Moonhack something parents can do with their kids,” said Jackie Coates, Head of the Telstra Foundation, the Founding Funder of Code Club in Australia.
“As a mum of tweens, I’ve been able to get involved in coding with my kids through Code Club’s unique approach – and we’ve had a blast doing it,” she said.
Moonhack has occurred before, with the last event seeing over 10,000 Aussie kids building, coding, and programming.
This year, Code Club is taking it worldwide, and with more than 65,000 kids in the 1950 Code Clubs across Australia, not to mention the amount of places kids can learn to code across the world, it’s very possible Moonhack 2017 could break that.
“Moonhack is about so much more than just kids coding,” said Kelly Tagalan, General Manager of Code Club Australia.
“We are reading kids’ statements along with their registrations telling us why this kind of education is so important. One girl said, she’s planning to be an engineer, like her dad, and wants to learn to code early, because it’s helpful to her in solving problems,” she said.
“We also want kids to spark a love for learning through computational thinking, because it will be required in more than 70% of jobs of the future- complex problem solving and a basic understanding of how technology is built is already an in-demand skill set in Australia’s job market,” said Tagalan.
Code Club’s Moonhack is set to happen on August 15. If you’re struggling to work out how to get kids coding or kickstarting that journey, we even have a guide for that.
And if you’re a parent keen to learn with your little one, it might be time for you to dabble alongside. You never know what you might be able to build, even as an adult.
