The Australian Education Reporter
Bringing coding to class
PROGRAMMING School CODE4FUN teaches coding six days a week to over 1350 students in 28 schools and education centres across the Sydney metropolitan area and rural NSW.
Originally launched by two techie parents Elena Sveshnikova and Grigory Punanov with a primary goal to educate their own kids and their friends, the
CODE4FUN team now consists of 12 coding professionals.
The program runs workshops before and after school, during school hours as a part of the school curriculum, during school holidays, and even teaches children in remote schools via video conferencing.
“For students who may not necessarily be known for their high academic achievements at school, coding has become an area where they can succeed and achieve high results – which can be applied to future job prospects as well,” CODE4FUN cofounder Elena Sveshnikova said.
“It’s great to see that more and more Public, Catholic and Independent schools have already stepped ahead and introduced coding to their students as a part of curriculum.”
CODE4FUN has developed its own coding syllabuses for students of different ages and levels, starting from Beginners courses for Y2-Y6 and progressing all the way to the Pro level courses for Y8-Y11, and has recently offered its coding syllabus to other schools.
“We just signed an agreement with one of the coding schools in UK,” CODE4FUN cofounder Grigory Punanov said.
“Now we are offering our Beginners Coding course materials to any educational institution interested in starting a coding program for primary school children. This syllabus is very detailed and coherent. We made sure that we increase a level of difficulty gradually step by step, introducing some new concepts as we go and also reinforcing what has been taught so far,” he said.
“It is written by our teachers and based on hundreds of hours of the coding classes we’ve been running during last three years.”
Throughout the course students create over 20 different projects like animations, computer games, and even real world software prototypes like a Google Self Driving car prototype. There are also multiple coding challenges embedded in the syllabus, so students can code with their teacher, or create their own projects.
All projects taught by CODE4FUN involve a great deal of Maths, Trigonometry and Physics, but in a fun and playful way.
“In order to create a platformer type of a game where a character jumps from one platform to another, students need to come up with a realistic gravity algorithm,” said Mr Punanov.
“This involves a lot of calculation, reinforces the X& Y coordinates system, and explains how acceleration works in gravity.
“Students learn and apply this knowledge straight away: if the algorithm is correct, the game works!”
For more information visit www.code4fun.com.au.