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ComputerXplorers: Programming for Primaries Week

ComputerXplorers: Programming for Primaries Week

Categorised in: ComputerXplorers    Posted: January 10, 2015


ComputerXplorers has earmarked 26th January – 1st February 2015 to be the date for this year’s Programming for Primaries week to raise awareness of the need to introduce programming skills to children at an early age.

The aim of the week is to shine a spotlight on the support and resources available both directly to children and to help schools and teachers deliver great programming classes in primary schools.

As part of that initiative ComputerXplorers is offering FREE programming classes for children or for teachers.

‘Year 8 is too late’
‘Year 8 is too late’ is the clear message when it comes to inspiring and encouraging children to learn programming and coding skills.

By the time they arrive at secondary school too many children have already decided that computing is not for them. Whether that self-selection is as a result of gender, economics, interest level or lack of exposure to inspiring opportunities, they miss out.

It is vital to engage and inspire children at a much younger age. In spite of some progress in recent years too many children never grasp those vital skills that enable them to become creators and not just consumers of technology and set them on a path of great career options.

Those children will forever be on the wrong side of the digital divide.

ComputerXplorers – primary programming pioneers
ComputerXplorers has pioneered the introduction of programming classes for primary school children and pre-schoolers. Since 2006 the company’s programming and coding classes have inspired children to develop and broaden their computing skills alongside a wide range of technology classes from 3D animation and modelling to Minecraft and web design – all with computational thinking, creativity and critical thinking at their core.

We share the belief that computer skills are central to economic progress at an individual level as well as at a national level. Those skills are just as valuable to children who go on to work outside of the technology sector as they are to children aspiring to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Primary National Curriculum for Computing – helping schools and children
The Government’s revised national curriculum for England from September 2014 has started to put the spotlight on Computing. It places significant emphasis on teaching children how to write code.

Pupils aged five to seven will be expected to “understand what algorithms are” and to “create and debug simple programs”. By the age of 11, pupils will have to “design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems”.