Coding Class inspiring kids about the future of learning

Christian Bjerre Nielsen, CTO from uQualio, has contributed to the Coding Class for 6Y at Amager Fælled School.

A super nice experience – passing on computational thinking to children early is important, so they know where software in everyday life comes from. An experience that both the children and uQualio got something out of.

What is Coding Class

Coding Class is a project that aims to get children and young people ready to act in the digital world, so that they can be an active part of our workforce and in our society. This is done by teaching them to be creative and creative with IT.

Coding Class has been created by a number of member companies in the IT industry and has been initiated with a view to the future establishment of a Technology Understanding subject in primary schools. The purpose is to create commitment and a desire in children and young people to work innovatively with IT so that they can gain an understanding of the logic behind the products they use on a daily basis, so that they can seize the opportunities that exist in digitization to the delight of themselves and of Denmark as a whole.

In collaboration with municipalities, coding is taught in primary schools with a focus on an innovative and creative process for the students. The project builds on the positive experiences gained in the voluntary project Coding Pirates and on experienced staff from here.

With the project, we can also in Denmark start to gain experience with computational thinking in school, equip more and more teachers for a new role and a different form of interaction with students, and start giving students skills to be creative and creative with IT and coding.

Coding Class for 6Y at Amager Fælled Skole

We at uQualio had been looking forward to Monday 28 November with excitement. It was the last day of the Coding Class course that we went through together with 6Y at Amager Fælled Skole.

We were very excited about what they would present and how it would go with 29 students, two teachers, and a supervisor from Copenhagen Municipality’s Coding Class concept.

The presentation is the last step in the process you as a company take part in in Coding Class. There are a total of five days for the class, where you as a company participate on the first two days and for the presentation at the end.

The process for Coding Class

• Day 1: Learning to code a game with backgrounds and different Sprites in Scratch.
• Day 2: Get the mission – the children have to work with innovation processes to find a good solution.
• Day 3: Opportunity to present your first thoughts and ideas before designing a solution begins.
• Day 4: Complete solution and prepare presentation for company.
• Day 5: Meet the company again. Present your idea and the company gives feedback on the solutions.

Videos and about video eLearning on uQualio

uQualio makes a video eLearning platform that takes short videos and uses them for learning in virtually all areas. It is a technology that young people are used to using with TikTok and YouTube, and it can be used by anyone as long as you are connected to the internet via your phone or computer.

It, therefore, made good sense to be a company in the project, so that the children got an impression of what it takes to make software. When 6Y gets older, it will probably be with even more expectation that learning happens when you need it – and not in 45-minute lessons where you sit on your bum. Therefore, we could see an opportunity to enter the Coding Class and learn more about how young people in school watch videos and how it can be incorporated into e.g. The UN’s Global Goals, environment, and health.

Day 2: Mission for Coding class

I was excited to see how the first meeting with 6Y would go on Monday 7 November 2022. As I had to take the meeting from Jutland at short notice, it, unfortunately, had to be on Teams. Fortunately, it wasn’t a problem. The meeting went smoothly with good technical support from teachers and supervisors on site at Amager Fælled Skole.

I first gave a little background on uQualio being part of their project, answered their questions, and then helped to formulate the mission of this Coding Class.

We came up with the following missions:

• a virtual class where a new student can move around a classroom Co-spaces and meet his classmates virtually with a short video from a course on uQualio. The new student should be able to move around and click on each classmate and hear a short introduction and maybe answer a few questions about hobbies, favorite games, etc. so that as a new student you could quickly get a few points of reference in the class. The idea also appealed to the teachers, since they also meet new classes where there are suddenly 25-30 young people that they have to know and relate to. With that as an example of how you can learn new things via short videos, the class was divided into groups that had to come up with a topic that they wanted to work on during the course.

• use gamification to keep the school and classroom clean, where the student can see how things should look and take a short course if there are doubts. It was a very popular proposal from both students and teachers.

• create a virtual culture and sports center where you can learn about activities and perhaps meet virtually with others who want to learn a new sport.

Day 3: Project Idea presentation

The next time the class and I met was the following week when I was present in 6Y’s classroom at school. Here I had to hear a short pitch from each group about their project idea. It was a pleasure to hear how they had worked their way into suggestions and ideas.

It was also clear that there were some things that were slightly in a different direction or that were not realistic to achieve within the time that 6Y had available in the Coding Class course.

Day 5: Final presentation at uQualio

A few weeks later, the class was on its way by metro to Veksø, where uQualio has its Danish office. The class leaves the station and passes paddocks with horses before arriving at the office, where we are ready to receive them – and to see and hear their solutions.

Each group presented their solution to us and their peers. It was with a review of their CoSpaces and a presentation where they gave some details about the product and the process.

Here is a picture from the group that focused on keeping the oceans clean from pollution. A diver who could move around among the animals and objects of the sea.

All the students had a contribution to the process and many of the students spent time making details about their solution which were quite nice.

After we had taken a walk around the office building and played with our office dog, our CEO Hatla Johnsen explained why video-based learning and ‘just-in-time’ learning are quite suitable for many things. She also said that it is not just about writing code when you have a software company, but that there is a need for mathematics and languages and many other things you learn at school.

The students were given free question time about being in a startup at the end of it.

After the last question, there was lunch with many meatballs and soft drinks 😊

At the end of our Coding Class, I asked our CEO, Hatla Johnsen, to explain why we, as a small software company, have chosen to participate in the Coding Class:

“With our platform, we help to make it easier to share learning in an easy way and in that way increase welfare and provide better education for everyone. This also applies locally here in Denmark, where we must increase digital understanding in all parts of our society. That’s why we support Coding Class, as we can give young people in elementary school a better insight into what happens in a software company, and perhaps nuance the image that they themselves have or have been given by their parents and the media.“

Hatla explained

A big thank you to 6Y at Amager Fælled Skole, their teachers, Andreas Bro Kastrup, the learning consultant at Copenhagen Municipality, and the IT Branch organization.

uQualio is ready to participate again another time.