Coding for Teachers

We applied for the project because we saw a clear need to get more programming into schools. Computers have evolved and have become part of not only almost everyone’s work life but also of almost every other aspect of life such as entertainment, health, finances, shopping, traveling, etc. They are in our phones, our watches, our cars, our home appliances, our entertainment systems, and even in our work tools. In all EU countries, we have a rising demand for skilled workers who can program computers; however, the gap between the skills needed and those with the skills is growing every year. The problem is not the willingness of young people to gain coding skills; the main problem is that we don’t have enough teachers who can support the learning of coding skills and in most EU countries we don't have the curricula that promote these skills. A large number of young people who learn programming do so by teaching themselves. However, this means that many young people are missing out The project's goal was to address this problem by providing an easy way for teachers to learn coding withan easy integration into school lessons. We made these lessons easily accessible on YouTube.

The objective of the project was to help schools and teachers provide more opportunities for young people to learn coding skills. Schools are often unable to get their students started with coding which is why we wanted to deliver a solution that not only helps teachers learn coding skills on their own, we also wanted to explain to them how to teach coding to their students and we wanted to help them integrate coding tasks into their normal classes. We wanted to reach a lot of teachers during the project in order to make this objective count. When more teachers are able to add coding to more classes, Europe has a better chance to meet the growing need for people with coding skills, and our young people will have more tools for creating a satisfying life for themselves.

We implemented a number of activities in order to meet our objectives: 1) Developing the course structure In this activity the partners created a concept for the videos to optimize the learning effect. The partners planned the content of the videos and created a script for each of them before doing the actual filming. We also created exercises for all the videos. 2) Setting up the website In this activity the partners designed and created the website and gave it the described functionality. A new unit was unlocked on the website whenever a new video was uploaded. 3) Creating the videos The partners filmed the videos. We created short exercises for each video. After finishing a video we tested it with teachers and revised it if necessary. We then uploaded it on the YouTube channel and embedded it into the website along with its respective exercises. 4) Translation Tasks All videos will received captions in different languages to make them more accessible in all partner languages. We created all videos in English first. 5) Networking Tasks The schools spread the videos within their own organization, but then they started contacting other schools as well. Networking was done through direct contact, either through already existing partnerships or through other school cooperation projects. 6) Social Media Tasks The partners used other social media channels in order to let teachers know about the videos and to convince them to subscribe. We set up social media communication from the beginning to grow the community gradually over time. 7) Evaluation Tasks During creation of the videos we constantly evaluated the work we did. We ran internal and external evaluation and collected feedback from our viewers in order to meet the needs of the teachers. Feedback was done by online feedback forms and by direct interviews.

The consortium created a series of 16 YouTube videos that were shared freely through a YouTube channel. We originally had a larger number of shorter videos in mind (our initial atempts produced 2-4 minute videos which would have tripled the number of videos) but the feedback from our first testers was that they didn't want to switch between videos all the time and that videos of around 10 minutes were the best length for learning if we could summarize a topic and cover several related aspects. We had also initially planned to cover the exercises in each video but feedback suggested that it was better to add the exercises ina written form to make them easier to find and more accessible to teachers who simply wanted to use the in class. We listened to this feedback and produced longer videos and added the exercises as separate files. The videos we produced focus on teaching two things: They take teachers from a beginner level in programming to an experience level at which they are comfortable teaching their students how to program. They also inspire and instruct teachers in order to help them integrate coding into a variety of classes, such as mathematics, geography, history, language learning and natural sciences. Each video is supplemented with added exercises to make them more interactive and to give teachers the opportunity to test their own skills. The programming language taught is Python because it is easy to learn, very relevant in many different fields and it keeps growing in popularity. In addition, it has been recommended by several countries to use in schools Another part of the project's output is the creation of a free and easily accessible website that guides learners through the video series by saving their progress locally and helping them to return to where they paused. Each video was embedded in the website along with the exercises that are related to the learning content delivered by the video and give teachers the opportunity to test if they learned the transmitted knowledge.