Coding Curriculum

From Low-Wage Worker to a Six-Figure Income Coding

Transitioning to a career in coding can literally transform a person’s life. The Tampa Bay Times takes a look at this in a recent article titled “Low-wage workers turn to coding to find lucrative jobs.”

Steve Lohr of the Tampa Bay Times writes, “After Paul Minton graduated from college, he worked as a waiter but always felt he should do more. So Minton, a 26-year-old math major, took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. As a waiter, he made $20,000 a year. His starting salary last year as a data scientist at a Web startup in San Francisco was more than $100,000. ‘Six figures, right off the bat,’ Minton said. ‘To me, it was astonishing.’ Stories like his are increasingly familiar these days as people across a spectrum of jobs — poker players, bookkeepers, baristas — are shedding their past for a future in the booming tech industry. The money sloshing around in technology is cascading beyond investors and entrepreneurs into the broader digital workforce, especially to those who can write modern code, the language of the digital world. Internet giants like Google and Facebook have long fought over the top software engineers in the country, and that continues. But now, companies in most every industry, either by necessity or to follow the pack, are pursuing some sort of digital game plan — creating lucrative opportunities for computing-minded newcomers who, like Minton, want to reboot their lives.”

WSOC examines jobs in the coding industry in a recent article titled “9 Investigates: Companies seek computer coding knowledge.” Stephanie Maxwell of WSOC writes, “Some of the highest-paying jobs in the country are going unfilled, because not enough college graduates possess the skills to fill them. Computer programming jobs are growing two times the national average and in North Carolina there’s more than 18, 000 vacant positions. John Sutton is president of the digital unit at Red Ventures, a technology company in Indian Land, South Carolina. Sutton said despite explosive growth in the past few years, Red Ventures struggles to find employees to fill their coding jobs. ‘The coding and engineering market is probably the hardest market out there today in the USU.S. Specifically in the Southeast, we’ve found it really difficult to attract good talent,’ Sutton said.”

When it comes to providing a quality coding education, we’ve got you covered at CodeRev Kids. With our customized curriculum, your child will receive a solid foundation in coding and have plenty of fun in the process.

At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. With us, students have the opportunity to use their newfound skills to create apps, games, robots, and much more.

Furthermore, while we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

When it comes to quality coding education, no one does it better than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Harvard Scientist Codes a Movie onto DNA

How do you store your data? Flash drive? External hard drive? The Cloud? A Harvard scientist is trying to create a new, more organic storage space: DNA. The Los Angeles Daily News takes a look at this in a recent article titled “This Harvard scientist is coding an entire movie onto DNA.”

Emilie Munson of the Los Angeles Daily News writes, “What if all the information on the internet could be stored in a drop of liquid the size of a quarter? What if billions of copies of that information could be made in minutes? And what if it were guaranteed that all that information would be safe not just for your lifetime, but for millions of lifetimes? Sounds like wishful thinking, right? To Harvard genetics professor Dr. George Church, it sounds like the future. Church is one of the world’s premier DNA scientists. He made headlines recently for his research attempting to bring the wooly mammoth back from extinction. His many contributions since the 1980s include developing anti-cancer nano-robots and detectors for dark matter. Somewhat more obscurely, he’s the inventor of CRISPR, which allows scientists to elegantly cut and paste DNA, enabling the removal of undesirable chromosomes, among other applications. In 2014, scientists in Church’s lab successfully used CRISPR to cure mice of liver disease. Now, Church is focused on doing something no other scientist has succeeded in doing: coding a film onto tiny strands of DNA.”

Munson goes on to describe the process of coding the movie into DNA. She writes, “The DNA that Church is using to store ‘A Trip to the Moon’ is different from that found in living organisms. Instead, it is ‘unnatural DNA,’ crafted to be denser and more robust, perfected for storing high quantities of information. The process of coding the film to DNA is fairly complicated, but in simple terms, it goes something like this:

Every movie image is made up of hundreds of tiny pixels, each of a specific color. Church assigns each pixel a code made up of zeros and ones, for example 001001, based on its color. This code is then converted into adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T), the chemical bases that make up DNA.”

The things we can do with coding are truly fascinating. But no matter what wild things scientists and programmers do, there is one common thread: a quality coding education.

If you want to give your child a customized, high quality coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise, making the entire curriculum customized. We may be known for having the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you’re looking to take your child’s coding education to the next level, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

New App Helps Developers Locate Coding Problems

Often times, we think of coding in terms of creating things to make life easier for consumers. Recently, SourceDNA decided to offer up a product to aid developers. Venture Beat explores this in a recent article titled “SourceDNA launches Searchlight, a developer tool to find coding problems in any app.”

Ken Yeung of Venture Beat writes, “‘People think about the most obvious ways to solve problems. With developers, it’s solving a problem when they’re writing the code,’ said Lawson. ‘Most people don’t think about reviewing their work after the code has been written. You have to do a lot of detective work.’ What Lawson is referring to is that developers aren’t always looking deep into their code to find out what’s broken and needs to be fixed. Often it might just be a referral to a code library and if something is broken, it can be difficult to find out which customers are affected by the bad code. This is something SourceDNA wants to showcase — its ability to give developers the tools to build better apps than are currently out in the marketplace. Lawson explained that the company is already scanning through 60,000 apps a day, but is still playing catch-up. However, the service is something existing marketplaces don’t provide: When you submit an app to Apple or Google, the reviewers are going to make sure that the app doesn’t violate any of its standards. They won’t examine the code to see if there are any potential problems in the code itself. SourceDNA takes things one step further. Originally geared as a business intelligence service (think Nielsen for apps), SourceDNA has moved beyond telling companies about app trends to helping developers figure out what’s wrong with their apps. Lawson and his team have spent more than three years working on SourceDNA and seem to have found success with its BI unit. Today, it’s also targeting developers as a new audience, so now the company is addressing both sides of the ecosystem.”

In order to put your child in a position to build a career as a developer, you need to start with early coding education. When it comes to coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids.

At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. The lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized.

Furthermore, while we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you’re looking to begin or further your child’s coding education, there’s no better choice than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Education

Karlie Kross Discusses Making Coding Cool for Girls


You can add Karlie Kross to the chorus of people trying to engage more young girls in coding. The Daily Mail reports on this in a recent article titled “Karlie Kloss reveals why she’s determined to make coding cool for girls while posing for sultry photo shoot for FLARE magazine.”

Caitlin O’Toole of the Daily Mail writes, “The beauty told FLARE she has recently enrolled at New York University, and is having fun picking out her courses. And she shared her love of a surprising hobby – coding. ‘It’s always fascinated me, but it’s not a subject I was taught in school,’ she said of her programming passion. ‘So last year, I decided to take a coding crash course and I ended up LOVING it.’ The model now encourages other women and girls to take up coding, and even donated $20,000 to New York’s Flatiron School for a scholarship to encourage women to code. The model told the publication that she feels a responsibility to be a good example to young people and admitted that she wants other women to follow in her footsteps by taking the course. ‘There’s a big misconception that coding is strictly mathematical; it’s actually incredibly creative,’ she told FLARE. ‘Code runs everything around us, and young women are so important to defining the future.’”

Education Dive also takes a look at coding education for girls in a recent article titled “Coding courses provide entry point for girls in tech.” Kate Schimel of Education Dive writes, “In a Girls Who Code course hosted this summer by the Florida State University, female students taught robots to dance, worked in groups to fix coding problems, and gained confidence for entering the male-dominated tech field… The course is one way Florida educators are trying to get more girls involved in computer science and tech, as few currently enter STEM fields… Meanwhile, Miami-Dade schools have introduced computer science classes as early as kindergarten, in part to engage female students in technology early on.”

For young girls in California, there’s no better option for coding education than CodeRev Kids. With us, children get a customized coding education that allows them to create everything from apps to games to robots.

Our program emphasizes computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. In addition to being the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you want to give your daughter the best coding education opportunity, look no further than CodeRev Kids!

Coding Education, Education

Wired Argues You Should Be Coding in Your Physics Class

CodingAccording to Wired Magazine, if coding isn’t part of your Physics course, something is wrong. Rhett Allain of Wired explores this in a recent article titled “You Should Be Coding in Your Physics Course.”

Allain writes, “IT’S NEAR THE start of a new semester of physics. Many faculty are working on their plans for introductory physics courses. How many tests should there be? What about homework? Do I want to cover fluids? What about numerical calculations? Let’s talk about the numerical calculations. Sadly, I think the majority of physics faculty don’t even consider to include numerical calculations in their physics courses. Of course, by numerical calculations I mean the process of breaking a complicated problem into many smaller (and easier) problems. Since this makes many problems to solve, the simplest strategy is to use some type of computer. Thus some people might call this computational physics or even physics coding. Call it what you like, but I think it’s an important topic to cover in introductory classes. What are some of the reasons faculty don’t include numerical calculations? Here are some common concerns for faculty along with my reply. ‘This is not a computer science class.’ Well, that’s true. This is a physics courses. However, this is also not an English class. Does that mean that there should be no writing or reading? It’s not a math class, but students should still use math. It’s not an art class, but students should still be able to draw force diagrams. Physics is not ONE THING in isolation from all other things. Really, there are no classes that could just stand by themselves. Could you imagine any course that didn’t use words and instead only had pictures? No, that would be difficult. Physics has to use many different fields to study the nature of the universe. That’s what makes it so awesome. Of course it’s not just faculty that say ‘this isn’t a computer class’—students think this too. Here is my response to them.”

If you’re looking to give your child a foundation in coding that could lead to a prosperous career, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, we customize your child’s coding education, making lessons both highly informative and fun.

Our lessons emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. These lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise.

Even though we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Contact us to enroll in or simply learn more about our different afterschool programs.

Coding Education

Coding Gives Prisoners a Second Chance

coding prisonersFrom baristas looking for new careers to prisoners looking to make the most of second chances, coding offers a vast array of opportunities. BBC explores this in a recent article titled “Can computer coding help prisoners find a new life?”

Christian Parkinson of BBC takes a look at the situation in a video and writes, “Computer software, apps and websites are all made using coding languages or code for short. But despite the importance of coding, there is a major global shortage of people with the right skills. One group in South Africa is working to change that and hopes to create better opportunities for former prisoners. Brothers For All is an organisation founded by former criminals who now teach coding both in poor neighbourhoods and in prison.”

WBUR examines coding as a second career path in a recent article titled “Coding Camps Climb Professional Ranks.” Tom Ashbrook of WBUR writes, “Computer software coding bootcamps are grabbing headlines lately. Two or three months of intensive training in writing code or analyzing data and – boom – the twentysomething on the cover goes from waiting tables at $20,000 a year to code warrior glory at $100,000 a year. Crash courses in software coding – ‘bootcamps’ – are springing up all over. A lot of grads do appear to be getting good jobs. What’s the magic? The demand? The need being filled? And is this the future of a train-for-the-job economy? This hour On Point: bootcamp, career change, and the US labor market now.”

The best way to help your child get a leg up on coding is to start early. When it comes to coding education, you won’t find a better option out there than CodeRev Kids. We offer a wide variety of courses that allow your child to not just code, but see the fruits of his/her efforts by creating robots, apps, websites, games, and much more.

At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. This creates an entire curriculum that is customized. In addition to being the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

For more information, check out our different after school tracks of STEM and coding Camps!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Coding Considered “Child’s Play” for Dubai Startup

dubai-arab-emissionsWhenever we discuss the need for more coding education, our eyes tend to look overseas at countries where education, in general, tends to be more of a priority. We look at the youth in these countries as the future of our workforce, especially if we don’t improve our coding education efforts. To get an idea of what the state of coding education looks like overseas, consider a recent article for the National titled “For one Dubai start-up, computer coding is child’s play.”

Hareth Al Bustani of the National writes, “On one side of the room, children are building worlds and on the other, websites. A boy taps away at his keyboard, typing commands and tying up loose ends. He appears in his element, even if the name of the language he is using – Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) – would be enough to put most people off. ‘I’m making a ninja profile page,’ says Eissa Al Mulla, a nine-year-old Emirati, pointing to a screenful of text commands. He switches over to a preview of the web page and, like magic, it all makes sense. ‘I have to insert a picture and then write something about him, and then his interests, jobs and where he’s lived,’ says Eissa. The ninja, according to the webpage, is 23. ‘He likes backflips, teriyaki steak and lurking in the darkness. His jobs are protecting the city, defending against enemies and chopping fruit with his sword. He’s lived in Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo,’ reads Eissa. The page is basic – a white background, one image and text of varying sizes and formatting – but Eissa has built it entirely using code. ‘It’s quite simple; it’s not that hard really. I’m just using indents to make it more organised.’ Eissa is on just his second day at the Coding Circle, an educational start-up based at Impact Hub Dubai. The web development course, which teaches HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript, is taught mainly by Sajjad Kamal, 26.”

If you’re looking to get your child up to speed when it comes to coding, there’s no better option than CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, we focus on Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. As a result, the entire curriculum is customized. In addition to having the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. Thus, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

With a membership, students come into our center for customized class time between 10-25 hours per month, depending on the plan you choose. Class time hours are available anytime before 7pm on weekdays and between 10am – 3pm weekends.

Whatever coding education needs you might have, look no further than CodeRev Kids!

 

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

How Coding Can be a Career Game Changer Even if You Didn’t Start in Tech

coding-career-laptopIn South Florida, coding classes are booming. The Miami Herald takes a look at this in a recent article titled “South Florida’s hottest education trend: Coding class.”

According to the author of the article, “So like an increasing number of kids across South Florida, Daniel spent some of his summer days in an air-conditioned classroom, learning the first steps of something many people find daunting — crafting computer code. His immersion started simply. He played Minecraft, a video game where users construct a world with 3-D blocks, and then he learned to create changes in that virtual world to suit his liking. The importance of knowing how to code is no longer some secret shared among techies in Silicon Valley. Last year, President Barack Obama called on kids to start coding, and some celebrities you wouldn’t necessarily identify as geek types — like Shakira and Ashton Kutcher — spoke out about how all students need to develop the skill. In South Florida this summer, educators and entrepreneurs set up shop in classrooms and day care centers to host coding camps for kids of all ages and grades. While some were low cost or supported by grants, other ran as as much as $2,000 for two weeks.”

While youth in South Florida are taking early steps to get their coding education, adults throughout the country are doing their best to catch up with the changing market. The New York Times examines this in a recent article titled “As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change.” Steve Lohr of the New York Times writes, “After Paul Minton graduated from college, he worked as a waiter, but always felt he should do more. So Mr. Minton, a 26-year-old math major, took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. As a waiter, he made $20,000 a year. His starting salary last year as a data scientist at a web start-up here was more than $100,000. ‘Six figures, right off the bat,’ Mr. Minton said. ‘To me, it was astonishing.’ Stories like his are increasingly familiar these days as people across a spectrum of jobs — poker players, bookkeepers, baristas — are shedding their past for a future in the booming tech industry. The money sloshing around in technology is cascading beyond investors and entrepreneurs into the broader digital work force, especially to those who can write modern code, the language of the digital world.”

For youth in California, the best bet for a comprehensive, customized coding education is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, we focus on Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. As a result, the entire curriculum is customized. In addition to having the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. Thus, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Whatever coding education needs you might have, the best bet for your child is CodeRev Kids!

 

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Utah County Girls Learn Both Coding and Networking with Executives

coding-php-womenCoding education is fun. For girls in Utah County, it’s also an early exposure to the business world. The Daily Herald discusses this in a recent article titled “Girl Code: Utah County girls learn coding, share products with execs.”

Karissa Neely of the Daily Herald writes, “It takes multiple lines of computer code to make even the simplest animation, game, website or story-board, but the girls at InsideSales.com’s first-ever coding camp tackled it all. The camp lasted from Tuesday to Friday, but the 37 girls, ages 7-14, were not hunched over computers the whole time at the InsideSales offices in south Provo. There was plenty of talk about code, but there was almost just as much time devoted to building teams and learning how to work together. In one such activity, the girls were broken up into small groups and given the same materials — tape, straws, cardboard, etc. — and told to create a holder that would protect a raw egg from cracking when dropped from a roof. Two of the six groups were actually successful in protecting their egg. ‘For all the groups, we saw that it really helped them see how good teams work together and collaborate,’ said Michael Plante, vice president of marketing at InsideSales. The girls, coming from all over Utah County, and even a bit beyond, needed those skills to do their final projects that were the culmination of the week’s efforts. With the coding skills they learned, 15 groups built an app, an animation, a movie, a game, or a website, and shared it Friday afternoon with their parents and InsideSales executives.”

At CodeRev Kids, we understand the need for coding education is imperative. By 2020, 1 million computing jobs will go unfilled in the United States due to a lack of appropriate preparation of our future workforce. As of right now, students are graduating from excellent universities without the ability to obtain positions that utilize their expertise, yet someone who graduates from college with a computer science degree is very likely to obtain a desirable and high earning position immediately.

In order to help give your child all the opportunities that a computer science degree will provide, we give him/her a foundation based on Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise, thus making the entire curriculum customized.

Not just are we known for being the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. Because of this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you think CodeRev Kids could be right for your child, check out our afterschool programs and summer camps!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

Using Coding to Bring Together Different Faiths

different-beliefs-codingCoding doesn’t just bring computer enthusiasts together. Coding education can help to unite different cultures and people of different beliefs. Consider a recent article from the Huffington Post titled “Interfaith Girls Coding Class Teaches Students The Common Language Of Computers.”

Antonia Blumberg of the Huffington Post writes, “Sponsored by Near Neighbours, an interfaith wing of the Church Urban Fund, and funded by a grant from Department for Communities and Local Government, the coding class aims to expose students to faiths and cultures they may have previously had little contact with. Twenty-six girls, ages 12 and 13, were enrolled in the inaugural eight-week after-school class that ran from April 29 to June 17. The program aimed to equip the students with coding skills in Python, CSS and JavaScript. The girls came from different faith backgrounds and were enrolled at one of three schools: London’s Ayesha Muslim School, Maria Fidelis Catholic School and the Yavneh College Jewish School. Students were chosen by their school based on their IT skills, willingness to take on extra-credit and interest in engaging with people of other faiths, project founder Rabbi Natan Levy told The Huffington Post. Levy enlisted the help of Hannah Waxman, a local engineer at software company ThoughtWorks, to design and teach the class. The rabbi said he hopes to continue the course in the fall. ‘Computer coding felt like such an obvious focal point for this project, not least because it is an emerging field, but even more so because in this currently fractured world it holds promise as a shared language,’ Levy said. Just 11.2 percent of technology leadership jobs in Europe are held by women, according to a report by Gartner called the ‘2014 CIO Agenda: A Perspective on the Priorities of Women and Men.’ The percentage of women holding positions as chief information officers for technology companies has remained static at just 14 percent since 2004.”

At CodeRev Kids, we’re dedicated to providing coding education to youth through customized courses. Our students learn Computational Thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. Also, our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. This makes the entire curriculum is customized. In addition to being the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

If you’re interested in giving your child a unique, first class coding education, check out our different after school tracks of STEM & Coding Camps!