Estonia, CodeWeek and VIVITA
VIVITA team organised five workshops and thereby helped Estonia to reach the top 3 countries in the amount of coding activities taking place per population. The kids were improving their skills in robotics, programming and 3D design. Altogether there were 560 activities arranged in Estonia as part of the CodeWeek programme.
CodeWeek launched in 2013 and is a movement that celebrates creativity, problem solving and collaboration through programming and other tech activities. It is run by volunteers and enthusiast and supported by European Commission. The main purpose of CodeWeek is to raise the digital literacy across all ages, focusing on IT skills, including, but not limited to writing code. CodeWeek takes place once a year in October and the success of the event is based on each and everyone who feels they can contribute and share their skills. Events could organised by companies, NGOs, libraries, museums and educational institutions. This year CodeWeek took place between 10th to 25th of October and was eight in the series. Estonia was second in the scoreboard by the number of events organised per population.
Why did we participate in CodeWeek?
VIVITA firmly believes that world can be programmed and nothing is impossible. The ability to program is not limited to writing code, but it is in a way a challenge, where a problem is taken apart into smaller pieces and put back together into a working solution. This type of thinking process or problem solving ability is supporting various other skills of the 21st century and STEM skills: analytical and critical thinking, creativity, self management, scientific approach and entrepreneurship.
VIVITA organised 5 workshops in this year’s CodeWeek with total participants of 25 children. Lead by the goals of CodeWeek we focused on improving IT related skills.
Robot ball triathlon was the first event in the series. The goal was to compete (or complete) a special track by programming the movements of the robot ball through a tunnel, across dirt, over a ramp and through water.
In the Scratch workshop we drew a character and programmed it to move in its own environment. The projects are freely available here.
Minecraft workshop was mostly about making the chicken rain. We also learned about a few other tricks that Microsoft MakeCode has to offer to easily tweak the Minecraft world.
In the mBot workshop we learned about different sensors, made the bot to move, make sound, blink the lights, follow the line and avoid obstacles.
Last workshop was about making websites. We learned about main elements of a web page and created a personal web site.
CodeWeek workshops were facilitated by VIVITA Estonia team members Kertu, Heikko and Mari-Liis.
