Celebrating Hour of Code one micro:bit at a time

As a skill that is becoming progressively sought out in the 21st century, we believe that every child and educator in Canada should have the opportunity to try their hand at coding. And with initiatives like Hour of Code, we are able to do just that.

Organized by the Computer Science Education Week Advisory and Review Committees,

“the Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event. One-hour tutorials are available in over 45 languages. No experience needed. Ages 4 to 104.”

Their main goal however, is to “demystify” code to show that it can accessible to anyone willing to learn something new. With 400 partners worldwide and countless activities and tutorials, Hour of Code gives anyone the opportunity to learn the very basics of computer programming in order to fuel more engagement with the field of computer science.

Every year, the event takes place during the Computer Science Education Week (December 4-10), to honour the breakthrough success of a computer science pioneer - Admiral Grace Hopper. Together with Code Club Canada, we were very proud to celebrate computer programing as a partner of Hour of Code. This year, we offered free two-hour Hour of Code workshops across Canada with an interactive, hands-on project for kids 8 to 12 years old. The workshops took place in 6 cities across Canada: Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Quebec City and Waterloo. For each activity, kids used the micro:bit - a fun, interactive and pocket-sized codeable computer - to play the age-old Rock, Paper, Scissors game in an innovative way. Through these workshops, the participating kids took the opportunity to explore the world of code and exercised their critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity.

We were very happy demystify code for a day and teach kids across Canada that computer programming is an exciting field to explore. We had a fantastic time with Hour of Code this time around and we hope to be part of the event next year!

Our 2019 Hour of Code projects are live! Introduce coding to the kids in your life and get started with our Scratch and micro:bit projects.

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