EU Code Week kicks off to raise awareness on coding and other digital skills

EU Code Week, a grassroots initiative coordinated by the European Commission that focuses on boosting computational thinking, coding and related digital skills of young people, as well as training for teachers, kicks off with an online event today at 17:00 CET. Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market, said: “Being able to understand code and to write it in a meaningful sequence, is truly the superpower of the 21st century. Those who participate in the EU Code Week have a wonderful opportunity to acquire and improve their coding skills or teach others how to code.” Participants of this year’s EU Code Week can take part in 18 Code Week challenges that include concrete examples of how to bring coding to the classroom developed by Code Week, its partners and the community. The real enthusiasts can take on several more challenges, including Code Week bingo, as well as share their results on social media in order to win original prizes. Activity organisers are also encouraged to form CodeWeek4All networks of at least ten like-minded groups or from three different countries and gain Certificates of Excellence. And, on 14 October, teams of young coders from Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia and Romania will compete for the title of the winner of the EU Code Week Hackathon Final 2021. Finally, a 15-hour EU Code Week online Bootcamp is available until 18 October for pre-primary, primary and secondary school teachers of all subjects, who are interested in teaching coding and computational thinking to their pupils. For those interested to follow the EU Code Week, a one-stop-shop of free resources is available in the Learn and Teach sections of the website. More information is available here.