Teaching Coding to the Stateless

Imkaan Welfare Organization in collaboration with Coded minds started teaching coding to the children of Machar Colony. To kick off the project an app development course for ages 6-13 years was implemented.

 The course started off with a basic introduction to machine languages, programming languages, and App development. New topics were added gradually each week to make the progression of the course steady. The weekly breakdown of the curriculum is as follows:

• Week 1: Introductory Session with the Students
• Week 2: An Introduction to Programming Languages and how computers work
• Week 3: An introduction to code.org, a website for beginners to learn coding. We started off with AppLab as our platform to learn the basics of Application Development.
• Week 4: Getting familiar with logging in, opening levels, and playing games that help develop coding skills.
• Week 5: Learning how to drag, drop and effectively place the code in the right place.
• Week 6: First project: learning how to make a flashlight from scratch.
• Week 7: Learning how to insert images and sounds into an application.
• Week 8: Revision and Assessment

 A group assessment format was followed, the students were divided into groups of 3. Each group had to perform an activity(s) within a time limit. The activities given were the same levels that were practiced over the period of 2 months. 49 students participated in the course out of which 17 passed and will be part of the next application development course.