Getting ready for Code Week 2017!

• October 12, 2017
• admin

Written by Bernadette Zerafa, eSkills Malta Foundation Manager

“Since the beginning of times, humans have created with stone, iron, paper and pencil. Now we live in a different era where we mould our world in code. During Code Week we want to give everyone the opportunity to discover coding and have fun with it. Let’s learn coding to shape our future!”

– Alessandro Bogliolo, EU Code Week coordinator

Europe is skilling up in digital – the fifth edition of the EU Code Week will shortly take place between the 7th and the 22nd of October 2017. In preparation for these events, the Code week Ambassadors from Malta, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Lithuania, FyRoMacedonia, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden amongst others, met on Tuesday 12th September to attend a meeting held at the European Schoolnet in Brussels.

The meeting kicked off with a bit of speed dating to break the ice. Code week Ambassadors dressed in ‘orange’ discussed coding events that are being planned in different countries. The European Commission DG EAC gave a highly interesting presentation on the Erasmus project and how the European Code Week could benefit from this project. This proved to be an ideal opportunity for the Ambassadors to discuss and share experience of Erasmus and funding. The code week ambassadors were also given a very clear picture by Microsoft as why girls are not interested in STEM. The presentation was based on research carried out by Microsoft. A networking lunch with the ETY2020 group was held at the Philippe Le Bon Building.

The meeting came to an end with the agreement on the way forward on the petition for inclusion of Algorithms among the domains of intangible cultural heritage. The purpose of this petition is to raise awareness on the importance of algorithms. The text of this petition was written in English by the European Code Week Ambassadors. The petition can be signed here: https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/algorithms-as-intangible-cultural-heritage.html.

Everybody is encouraged to sign and support this initiative!

About the EU Code Week

The EU Code Week is a grass-root movement run by volunteers, who promote coding in their countries as Code Week Ambassadors. Join the celebrations and learn how to express yourself with code. Create an app, a game, a website, make an interactive story or why not tinker with some hardware or make a robot move? Organise coding events for your parents, grandparents, friends or children and colleagues and help them understand and become active in our digital world.Anyone – schools, teachers, libraries, code clubs, businesses, public authorities – can organise a #CodeEU event. For further information please visit: http://bit.ly/2w6M3p1 ​/ http://codeweek.eu/resources/​