Written by Jacquie Cremona Crossey, MITA Digital Outreach
MITA's Digital Outreach Team have participated in this year's EU Code Week by organising two days of activities for more than 300 students, coming from four local church schools. The events, organised between the 20th and the 21st of October, were characterised by workshops on robotics and game development, together with talks about possible careers related to coding and ICT.
On the first day of activities which were hosted by Savio College, MITA's team met with students coming from Stella Maris School of Gzira and from the hosting school. The event lasted about five hours and was well attended by over 100 students. On the next day, the event was hosted by St Augustine's College in Pietà, where students from St Monica's School of Gzira joined in as well. In this case, there were another 220 students who participated in the event.
All activities conducted during the two days were well received by both students and teachers. The students' energy and enthusiasm was felt by everyone present; as well as their curiosity into the subject. The activities were designed to allow the students to become fully immersed and engaged into the tasks they were working on; and appreciate the significance of coding.
The EU Code Week is an initiative which has an aim of promoting coding as a means of giving life to ideas, by using a person's creativity and the collaboration between different people from all over the world. This year marked the 4th edition of the EU Code Week and was organised between the 15th and the 23rd of October. Last year, this event attracted over half a million people across Europe who attended to 7,700 coding events in around 46 countries.
For this reason and because it forms part of the Digital Single Market Strategy, the European Commission is supporting the EU Code Week, while promoting digital skills such as programming to different target groups. The idea behind these activities is to expose programming to young, adults and elderly people and show them how to bring ideas to life with coding.
As technology is increasingly shaping our lives, it is essential that we understand how it works and how we can use it in our best interests at work and leisure. The EU Code Week is intended to promote the skills that are required, while helping us to be more creative and collaborative with other people who are creative like us.