This week, Microsoft is proud to again support Code.org’s “Hour of Code” campaign, a global movement to inspire millions of young girls and boys to try coding for an hour. With 65 per cent of children entering primary school today expected to work in careers that do not even exist yet (The World Economic Forum), coding will become one of the most important skills of this century. In the near future, 90 per cent of all jobs in Europe will require some level of digital skills (European Commission) – and that’s not technology specialists, but everyone who works. By offering more opportunities to learn coding skills both inside and outside the classroom, we are equipping Europe’s young people with the digital skills they will need to flourish in this changing job market.
In partnership with non-profit organizations, Microsoft is hosting fun and interactive coding sessions in 26 European markets to engage and delight students this week. In Greece, Microsoft is running a series of workshops for local schools, which they opened with a special Microsoft Adventure Coding class in partnership with humanitarian NGO Caritas Athens. 20 refugee children, accompanied by their parents, took part in a sixty minutes coding session with the Minecraft tutorial we launched earlier in November. The session was followed by an ‘Internet of Things’ workshop where the children were split into teams to build their own ‘smart houses’.
Microsoft Berlin is giving their Hour of Code sessions a festive flavour, with special coding events planned throughout December. On the 6 December, students aged 8 to 12 years will program their own Christmas stars and digital St. Nicholas in ‘Coding Claus’, while the ‘Coding Winter Beats’ session on 9 December will allow students to compose their own soundscape with Sonic Pi.
In the Baltics, Microsoft launched today a regional Minecraft online competition to challenge children and improve their coding skills. In parallel, Microsoft is organising a series of coding workshops in local schools across the Baltics region with Microsoft Student Partners to share their knowledge and passion for technology with students.
From Kazakhstan to Spain, Microsoft hopes to inspire girls and boys across Europe to pursue their interest in coding and digital skills this week. You can find out more about the Hour of Code here.
