If you come up with something creative and distinctive, it’s not unthinkable for kids to make apps that people want
Tamasin Ford, a former professional software developer and co-founder of Female Founder Pitch, was looking for Christmas gifts for her family when she discovered the kid’s coding world. She came across a coding game for kids, and given her professional background, she knew it was a world she wanted to expose to her own nieces and nephews.
But she soon found that beyond a few books and games, there weren’t many resources in Chicago for kids to learn how to code. Most programs were geared toward older students and serious game developers.
“Kids love technology,” said Ford. “We all know kids we can barely pull away from the computer.”
So in the spring of 2015, she piloted the first classes at Power Up Tech Academy (2867 N. Clybourn Ave) where students could learn to code. That spring, the school began with just 9 students — a number that grew to 169 this past summer. Still, class sizes remain small, she said, with only 8-10 students in each class and a student to teacher ratio of 4 to 1.
Classes are structured based on age and ability, according to the Academy’s website. They typically run in 10-week sessions (the next of which begins Sept. 19), with classes that last 60-75 minutes. Students range between 5 and 13 years old and can take classes from the preliterate stage to coding in languages like Python or Javascript. The Academy recommends that before reaching those higher levels, students take mid-level courses using a language called Scratch, which allows them to work with sounds and animations, creating puzzles or virtual spaces.
Ford explained that classes are designed to give students freedom to explore their creative sides. They can create websites and games, modify or work off existing games to “relate the environment to their kind of environment.” For example, if they want to replace an explosion with fireworks, they can do that. She had one student design a website based on the stories she was going to write one day. Another student designed a website for a food business — he even had plans to create an online reservation system.
“They get excited,” Ford said. “What’s amazing about tech is that it’s so universal. From cooking, to [games with] dragons, you’ll be able to express it in your coding.”
This fall, Power Up Tech Academy is introducing an Android app developing class. Using the camera and the phone’s multiple other capabilities, students will learn to make functional apps for their phones. If the kids so choose, they might even be able to get it into online app stores.
“If you come up with something creative and distinctive, it’s not unthinkable for kids to make apps that people want,” she said.
Despite the Academy’s quick growth and the depth of the Chicago tech scene, Ford said they still fight for the students’ attention among thousands of other after school activities. They struggle especially with capturing the attention of parents of young girls, according to Ford. She’s even known mothers in the tech world who can be guilty of “unconscious bias” — not even thinking to ask their daughters if they’d like to attend a coding camp.
Ultimately, not all parents are convinced that coding is a skill that can, and maybe should, be taught to young children, according to Ford.
“It has relevance to the world they’ll be [living in] in 15 years,” she said. “[The challenge is] getting people to think about — not just the importance of it — but how much their kids will like it.”
(Image via Power Up Tech Academy)
