TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) – The world of computer programming is big and Vigo County is teaming up with experts to make sure your child has a spot in it. That’s why a coding academy is teaming up with the community to help get the word out and that plan includes your child’s teacher.
“By the year 2020, there’s a statistic that says there will be 1.4 million IT jobs available with only 400,000 graduates to fill those jobs,” said Stephanie Castleman, The Eleven Fifty Academy, “There is a huge skills gap across the United States, and in Indiana in particular, we want to create Indiana as a hub for technology and a hub for coding.”
The Eleven Fifty Academy is a non-profit coding group that targets students to spark interest in computer programming. The academy has created a comprehensive education program known as Cool Coding Awareness Week. The program delivers age-appropriate coding programs to students and interested members of the community.
“Coding is, you and I may know it as, computer programming. It’s not medical coding, it is actually programming,” she said, “It is sitting and writing lines of code to effect a change in a program.”
Thanks to a grant secured by Launch Terre Haute, Terre Haute was selected as a site for Cool Coding Week. Coding Camps will take place at Terre Haute North Vigo High School and will be taught by local teachers and instructors. Tuesday night, instructors with the academy were on hand for their “Train the Trainer” event at the high school. Instructors were there to train Vigo County teachers on the Coding Camp curriculum.
“The teachers are actually implementing the curriculum that we have,” said Castleman, “We go from being the instructors at the academy to being teacher’s assistants when we’re in the community because we don’t want to just create an event and leave, we want to make it is sustainable for your community.”
“It’s that age and we have so many opportunities for students out there to get trained in some field that there’s a future in,” said Becky Bendickson, Teacher at Terre Haute North, “They say computers replace people in certain industries, well, they need people to maintain and program the computers.”
The Coding Camps provide an interactive way for students to learn more and spark an interest in computer programming. Just using the click of a mouse, students will be able to code their own fantasy game as well as other interactive exercises.
“They will be defining characters of the game, the background, the parts and pieces that move, the sounds, everything that goes into this game the kids are coding through scratch programming,” said Castleman.
While Cool Coding Week does target students, it also reaches out to those interested in coding in the community. Cool Coding Week is June 6th through 10th.
On June 9th and 10th, the academy will host a 2-day Intro to Coding course for the public. You can register online for the Intro to Coding course.
If your child is interested in the Cool Coding Camps, they can register for free. You can print off a registration form for the session you choose and return it to your child’s school.
