Starting in November, British Columbia teachers will have the opportunity to participate in coding training with the Canadian coding school, Lighthouse Labs in partnership with Kids Code Jeunesse.
“Lighthouse Labs is proud to support the Ministry of Education, teachers, and students across British Columbia. It is imperative that we show Canada’s next generation that code is a vessel for whatever passions you may have and inspire them to create rather than consume technology,” said Jeremy Shaki, co-founder of Lighthouse Labs.
Sixty school districts are invited to send two teachers to attend one of six regional two-day sessions taking place over the next four months in Victoria, Vancouver, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Trail and Prince George.
Follow up sessions will be available in the spring. Teaching children to code is part of B.C.’s new curriculum, though it’s not the first group to take the initiative.
Several groups, including the Lighthouse Labs, Ladies Learning Code and Bitmaker Labs, are out-of-school programs that operate across the country to teach people how to code. The B.C. Tech strategy however, is part of the longterm B.C. jobs plan.
“Preparing our kids for their future is our most important job, and getting teachers trained to teach coding and the new curriculum is just one way we are doing that. These new training sessions will provide teachers with the important tools they need to teach students the skills they need to succeed when learning coding,” said Mike Bernier, Minister of education in B.C.
The government of B.C. has awarded a two-year contract with Lighthouse Labs in partnership with Kids Code Jeunesse to deliver these regional training sessions.
It’s important to note that while coding is an optional part of the Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies K-9 curriculum being implemented this year, a statement sent to MobileSyrup claims that many teachers already teach coding.
Related: Apple launches Swift Playgrounds on App Store to make coding easy for everyone
[source]Province of British Columbia[/source]
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