500 Enthusiastic Junior Programmers

On Thursday 21 March and Friday 22 March, we taught an entire primary school in Rotterdam how to program with BetaKids, this time together with 9 Betabit colleagues.

A total of 500 children!

All pupils from groups 3 to 8, spread across almost 20 lessons, gained a better sense of how fun programming can be and what you can do with software. They now have a good understanding of how a computer or robot “thinks.” And their positive, enthusiastic reactions made our day.

Building algorithms and writing code together

The lessons naturally differed per age group. In groups 3 and 4, the children worked with cards to build algorithms that could move a “robot.” They even came up with the brilliant idea to add ‘2x’, ‘3x’ or ‘4x’ to arrow cards to reduce the number of cards needed. They basically created their own programming language.

Groups 5 to 8 got to write “real” code. Groups 7 and 8 were even able to show off their own video game or animation at home after just one lesson. It wasn’t quite Fortnite, but they were definitely proud.

It was great to see everyone - the children, the parent volunteers, the teachers and even the headteacher - become so enthusiastic about our craft.

The teachers will take it from here, and we’re ready for the next challenge. Read more about this initiative on our BetaKids page.