Celebrating the Apollo 11 moon landing

Nearly 50 years ago, humankind took one giant leap and landed on the moon for the first time. The endeavour involved an incredible amount of technological innovation that, amongst other things, helped set the stage for modern coding.

To celebrate this amazing feat, Code Club Australia are hosting Moonhack, an annual world record attempt to get as many young people as possible coding space-themed projects over 24 hours. This year, Moonhack is even bigger and better, and we want you to take part!

Moonhack past and present

The first Moonhack took place in 2016 in Sydney, Australia, and has since spread across the globe. More than 28000 young people from 56 countries took part last year, from Syria to South Korea and Croatia to Guatemala.

This year, the aim is to break that world record with 50000 young people — the equivalent of the population of a small town — coding over 24 hours!

Get involved

Taking part in Moonhack is super simple: code a space-themed project and submit it on 20 July, the anniversary of the moon landing. Young people from 8 to 18 can take part, and Moonhack is open to everyone, wherever you are in the world.

The event is perfect for Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and Raspberry Jams looking for a new challenge, but you can also take part at home with your family. Or, if you have access to a great venue, you could also host a Moonhackathon event and invite young people from your community to get involved — the Moonhack team is offering online resources to help you do this.

On the Moonhack website, you’ll find four simple, astro-themed projects to choose from, one each for Scratch, Python, micro:bit, and Gamefroot. If your young coders are feeling adventurous, they can also create their own space-themed projects: last year we saw some amazing creations, from a ‘dogs vs aliens’ game to lunar football!

For many young people, Moonhack falls in the last week of term, so it’s a perfect activity to celebrate the end of the academic year. If you’re in a part of the world that’s already on break from school, you can hold a Moonhack coding party, which is a great way to keep coding over the holidays!

To register to take part in Moonhack, head over to moonhack.com and fill in your details. If you’re interested in hosting a Moonhackathon, you can also download an information pack here.

The post Moonhack 2018: reaching for the stars! appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

On 15 August 2017, Code Clubs around the globe set a world record for the most kids coding in a day! From Madrid to Manila and from Sydney to Seoul, kids in Code Clubs, homes, and community centres around the world used code in order to ‘hack the moon’.

The Moonhack movement

The first Moonhack took place in Sydney in 2016, where we set a record of 10207 kids coding in a day.

The response to Moonhack, not just in Australia but around the world, blew us away, and this year we decided to make the challenge as global as possible.

“I want to create anything that can benefit the life of one person, hundreds of people, or maybe even thousands.” – Moonhack Code Club kid, Australia.

The Code Club New Zealand team helped to create and execute projects with help from Code Club in the UK, and Code Club Canada, France, South Korea, Bangladesh, and Croatia created translated materials to allow even more kids to take part.

Moonhack 2017

The children had 24 hours to try coding a specially made Moonhack project using Python, Scratch or Scratch Jr. Creative Moonhackers even made their own custom projects, and we saw amazing submissions on a range of themes, from moon football to heroic dogs saving our natural satellite from alien invaders!

In the end, 28575 kids from 56 countries and from 600 Code Clubs took part in Moonhack to set a new record. Record Setter founder and Senior Adjudicator, Corey Henderson, travelled to Sydney to Moonhack Mission Control to verify the record, and we were thrilled to hear that we came close to tripling the number of kids who took part last year!

The top five Moonhack contributing countries were Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, and Croatia, but we saw contributions from so many more amazing places, including Syria and Guatemala. The event was a truly international Code Club collaboration!

The founder of Code Club Bangladesh, Shajan Miah, summed up the spirit of Moonhack well: “Moonhack was a great opportunity for children in Bangladesh to take part in a global event. It connected the children with like-minded people across the world, and this motivated them to want to continue learning coding and programming. They really enjoyed the challenge!”

Of course, the most important thing about Moonhack was that the kids had fun taking part and experienced what it feels like to create with code. One astute nine-year-old told us, “What I love about coding is that you can create your own games. Coding is becoming more important in the work environment and I want to understand it and write it.”

This is why we Moonhack: to get kids excited about coding, and to bring them into the global Code Club community. We hope that every Moonhacker who isn’t yet part of a Code Club will decide to join one soon, and that their experience will help guide them towards a future involving digital making. Here’s to Moonhack 2018!

Join Code Club

With new school terms starting and new clubs forming, there’s never been a better time to volunteer for a Code Club! With the official extension of the Code Club age range from 9-11 to 9-13, there are even more opportunities to get involved.

If you’re ready to volunteer and are looking for a club to join, head to the Code Club International website to find your local network. There you’ll also find information on starting a new club from scratch, anywhere in the world, and you can read all about making your venue, such as a library, youth club, or office, available as a space for a Code Club.

The post Moonhack 2017: a new world record! appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

In the first video from our Code Club International network, we find out about Code Clubs around the world from the people supporting these communities.

Global communities

Code Club currently has official local partners in twelve countries. Our passionate and motivated partner organisations are responsible for championing their countries’ Code Clubs. In March we brought the partners together for the first time, and they shared what it means to be part of the Code Club community:

Of course, Code Clubs aren’t restricted to countries with official partner communities – they can be started anywhere in the world! Code Clubs are up and running in a number of unexpected places, from Kosovo to Kazakhstan.

Code Club partners gathered together at the International Meetup

The geographical spread of Code Clubs means we hear of clubs overcoming a range of different challenges. One club in Zambia, run by volunteer Mwiza Simbeye, started as a way to get kids off the streets of Lusaka and teach them useful skills. Many children attending had hardly used a computer before writing their first line of code at the club. And it’s making a difference! As Mwiza told us, ‘you only need to see the light shine in the eyes of [Code Club] participants to see how much they enjoy these sessions.’

Student Joyce codes in Scratch at her Code Club in Nunavut, Canada

In the Nunavut region of Canada, Talia Metuq was first introduced to coding at a Code Club. In an area comprised of 25 Inuit communities that are inaccessible via roads and currently combating severe social and economic deprivation, computer science was not on the school timetable. Code Club, along with club volunteer Ryan Oliver, is starting to change that. After graduating from Code Club, Talia went on to study 3D modelling in Vancouver. She has now returned to Nunavut and is helping inspire more children to pursue digital making.

Start a Code Club

Code Clubs are volunteer-led extra-curricular coding clubs for children age 9 to 13. Children that attend learn to code games, animations, and websites using the projects we provide. Working with volunteers and with other children in their club, they grow their digital skillset.

You can run a Code Club anywhere if you have a venue, volunteers, and kids ready to learn coding. Help us achieve our goal of having a Code Club in every community in the world!

To find out how to start a Code Club outside of the UK, you can visit the Code Club International website. If you are in the UK, head to the Code Club UK website for more information.

Help the Code Club International community grow

On the Code Club site, we currently have projects in 28 languages, allowing more young people than ever to learn programming in their native language. But that’s not enough! We are always on the lookout for volunteers to translate projects and resources. If you are proficient in translating from English and would like to help, please visit the website to find out more.

We are also looking for official local partners in Italy and Germany to join our international network – if you know of, or are a part of an enthusiastic non-profit organisation who might be interested to join us, you can learn more here.

The post The Code Club International movement appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.