KidsCodr – We teach kids programming Erasmus Project

Project Title

KidsCodr – We teach kids programming

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Information technology is gradually getting into all spheres of our life and we can hardly imagine exist without them. Despite all this, 23% of the population in Europe has no digital skills. In the work sphere digital skills are needed in almost 90% of job positions and companies will be lacking 900 000 IT specialists by 2020. Despite the fact that this trend is growing, education reflects these changes very slowly and digital skills training in schools alarmingly absent. There may be many reasons, from our experience it is mainly the lack of teaching materials and teachers do not have sufficient digital skills.

We were solving these problems with KidsCodr project in which we created a complete training curriculum to teach digital skills for children in age 6-14 years. The curriculum is divided into two parts. The software part where learning takes place in various programs, applications or directly in the programming language. This part is composed of the training modules like Scratch Junior, Scratch, Kodulab, MIT App Inventor, Javascript Games and Minecraft. The hardware part is focused on programming robots and hardware, and this allows students to receive immediate feedback on their work in a real environment (move of the robot, activate functions, etc.). In this section we have focused on Bee-Bot robots, Lego Mindstorm EV3, Nao robots and Arduino. The main educational element is video (about 15 per 1 module), which is complemented by annexes (source code, other assets attached). All components of the project are localized in 4 languages: English, German, Slovak and Czech. Second intellectual output of the project is a web application kidscodr.eu, which will unite at a glance all the educational materials and creates a system for communication and development of further KidsCodr activities. Our platform is available to all participants for free.

KidsCodr is aimed for schools and teachers, who can enrich their computer science classes of the modern tools and concepts in digital skills education. The we have focused on kids, that can learn on the portal independently on their self-pace or the receive this education through their teachers or code club instructors. The last target group were parents, volunteers and professional community, which participate on development of further KidsCodr activities like creation of new curriculums, organizing code clubs or promotion of the project.

The project has supranational character and its implementation will take place in Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria. In total, over 24 months, we engaged more than 1.500 registered users, from which a big part are teachers. Due to the language versions there is indirect benefit from the project in Europe targeting more than 20 million people (in countries UK, IR, DE, CH, AT, CZ, SK). Within the project, we have organized 3 multiplication events, each in partner’s countries, which helped us to advance the project to target audience and stand out in professional circles.

Our goal is to build an active community that will participate in the long-term development of the project. The project was realized and implemented by a consortium of 3 organizations where coordinator, CHECK IT Ltd., is owner of the largest educational project aimed at teaching digital skills in Slovakia. Similarly, the Austrian organization IFIT meantime has become the largest educational organization in the Austrian market, where they organized workshops, which were attended by over 6,000 pupils aged from six years. The third partner is the Czech organization JSI, which is a professional organization uniting ICT teachers in the Czech Republic.

Thanks to project KidsCodr, we have created and published the most modern educational concept in teaching digital skills for age group from 6-14 years old. The main long-term benefits are in increasing digital literacy and digital skills of our future generation and increase in interest in studying technical studies. Benefits for students will be in a better position in the labor market or in the implementation their own projects.
Our aim for the corporate sector is to make more qualified people available to realize business opportunities, ensuring further growth and raise the overall standard of living.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 224103,63 Eur

Project Coordinator

Check IT s.r.o. & Country: SK

Project Partners

• Institut zur Förderung des IT-Nachwuchses
• Jednota skolskych informatiku