TALBOT Primary School may be two hours from the big technology companies in Melbourne, but they’re proving they are just as clued-up in the coding world.
This week 35 pupils joined more than 10,000 children across Australia to break the world record for the greatest number of children coding at once as part of Code Club Australia’s Moonhack campaign.
The event was a first of its kind in Australia, with participants completing a series of computer programming exercises related to science and astronomy.
For the Talbot Primary School pupils it was a chance to put the skills they’ve learnt during their Code Club classes over the last year into practice.
Parent Emma Bennett, who teaches the after-school program, said coding was a chance for children to find a purpose in IT.
As part of the weekly program she said the students created their own online games.
“These guys will see a series of codes and they can tell you what the screen will do,” she said.
“It’s a logical language.
“This is high-functioning stuff, it something we would have been doing at high school.”
Supporting the use of IT and coding in education, principal Sharon Ranger said it gave the children an ability to control technology rather than just using it while improving their digital literacy.
“Kids experience a need, and it’s a common comment now that the jobs they will be doing in the future don’t exist yet,” she said.
Pupils Elliot, 9, and Seth, 10, could not agree more.
“It’s really fun and you learn a lot of things doing it,” Elliot said.
While Seth said he loved “that you can create stuff and make anything possible.”
