What is behind the discussion of coding schools and “technical ghettos?” USA Today explores this in a recent article titled “How talk of coding schools creating ‘technical ghettos’ gets it wrong.”
Kalimah Priforce of USA Today writes, “On the last day of Black History Month, The Atlantic published an article entitled Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’? The article uses an inflammatory and racially charged phrase, ‘technical ghettos,’ to voice concern from some quarters that programs such as Kimberly Bryant’s Black Girls Code are not teaching young people of color the kind of computational thinking needed to achieve success in the tech workforce. The contention: That these programs are myopically focused on teaching kids to code. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am one of those educators who provides opportunities for our kids through Qeyno Labs, an inclusive innovation company that three years ago launched Hackathon Academy as a ‘pop-up school.’ We do much more than teach kids to code, and that is what makes our programs widely popular among low-opportunity youth and their communities. In our coding programs, we teach young people to be hackers, and the first thing we teach them to hack is their own isolation, because poverty is not desperation or deprivation, poverty is isolation. Young people taking part in a Black Girls Code workshop, a Qeyno hackathon or in a boot camp at The Hidden Genius Project build apps that address the challenges in their communities such as sex trafficking, police brutality and teen depression. We provide culturally-relevant wrap-around education and workforce development that empowers and prepares our kids to succeed not just as engineers in the tech workforce, but as entrepreneurs and artists. And the experts cited in this article would know this had they ever visited our classrooms, hackathons or boot camps.”
When it comes to customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.
Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are 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.