Keep kids coding
Lockdown demands mean that young people’s digital skills could fall between the cracks. Our Code for scheme Life and the Rapid Router game offers a free, fun way of teaching coding at home. No experience is required!
Over 18,500 teachers use Code for Life in classrooms across 133 countries. More than 12 million games have been played, showing just how engaging children find it. The global uptake demonstrates the ease and value Code For Life’s resources offer educators. And that’s why we knew families at home could easily make use of them too.
Central to Rapid Router is an engaging game that helps families make screen time useful by increasing their child’s digital skills. Children as young as six can play and start learning Blockly and Python programming languages.
The challenge of teaching programming
The onset of a global pandemic has forced schools to close until further notice and many parents and caregivers are not familiar enough with computer science to feel confident in delivering coding lessons at home.
They are not alone. As recently as 2017, over 70% of teachers still felt they didn’t have the skills to teach computer programming.
This is why we launched Code for Life almost six years ago, as a free coding education resource for teachers - many of whom had no previous experience of coding and felt unprepared to deliver lessons in the subject.
Three principles guide everything we do with Code for Life;
- It will be free, forever
- Anyone will find it easy to learn and teach coding, even absolute beginners
- It will allow technology to become accessible for everyone
Start teaching coding at home
Since the start of lockdown there have been over 9,000 new Rapid Router users. Getting started is very easy. Register as an Independent Student on the Code for Life website for free access to the Rapid Router game.
You’ll find all the lesson resources here for you to download and start playing here
I would like to finish by asking a small favour. Please share Code for Life’s free coding resources with anyone you think could find them useful. We really must #KeepKidsCoding.
Skills for the future
Code for Life is part of our Skills for the future and Ocado Unlimited initiatives to harness the unlimited potential of technology for people and the planet.
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