To the uninitiated eye, a page of computer code is a bewildering sight: an erratic jumble of words, colors and symbols made nonfunctional by the misplacement of a single piece of punctuation. Adults struggle to make sense of the apparent chaos, so how much trickier might it be to understand for young students?
Codemoji, a Chicago-born edtech startup launching in Richmond this summer through Lighthouse Labs, says it's not tricky at all. You just have to speak to kids in their language: emojis.
“At least the fundamentals of computer science, they’re moving forward, but they’re not changing crazily,” co-founder Livio Bolzan said. “If kids can learn core concepts, that’ll just make them more well-prepared moving forward.”
Turning its back on traditional approaches to learning, Codemoji uses emojis as building blocks in teaching students how to code using HTML, CSS and Javascript (with plans to expand to Python down the road).
In fact, Bolzan pointed out, the Codemoji strategy is pedagogically backed, drawing on image-based approaches and then scaffolding students’ learning as their skills progress.
On the platform, emojis are associated with different elements of code: the stop sign signifies the end tag of an HTML document while the ice cream cone represents the tag for a first-level heading. By learning to associate the correct emojis with elements and functions of code, students not only take in the nuts-and-bolts of computer science, but also understand the broader framework of how different programming languages are structured.
As students master the emojis, said Bolzan, “we slowly transition them out of it. As they move on, they slowly abstract it.”
Because Codemoji aims to provide the building blocks of coding, the platform is oriented toward elementary school – but it isn’t only students who can take advantage of its offerings.
Codemoji also built tools into its platform for teachers, including templates for grading, assessments and lesson plans; tutorials; live support and mechanisms that track student progress.
“It’s not just giving [teachers] a tool, it’s making them feel confident about it,” Bolzan said.
Only about 2 years old, Codemoji has grown rapidly from its beginnings in Chicago. Founded jointly by Bolzan and Chase Engelbrecht, the platform underwent several rounds of testing and refining in the classrooms of receptive teachers there before beginning to expand.
This past spring, Codemoji secured $20,000 in funding from the Iowa Startup Accelerator before being accepted into the Lighthouse Labs incubator this summer.
Since the end of December 2017, the startup has really “hit the gas,” Bolzan said. Usage has doubled – today, Codemoji has about 50,000 registered users in 3,000 classrooms.
State public education mandates are a main driver of adoption. Arkansas got the ball rolling in 2015 when it passed a measure that required all public schools to offer at least one computer science course and devoted $5 million to the initiative. The state education department has since outlined standards for the incorporation of computer science into curricula from kindergarten through graduation.
In November 2017, Education Week reported that Virginia had become the first state to require computer science instruction – not just that courses be offered – a move encouraged by local nonprofit CodeVA.
Looking forward, Codemoji is aiming not only to expand geographically and incorporate different languages, but also to “go up a little bit higher conceptually” in its lessons to further student critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, Bolzan said.
