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When you code you begin with 01000001 01000010 01000011

June 16, 2015
The kids arriving in the GE Melbourne and Sydney offices after school barely pause to throw down their backpacks so they can get right back to coding. They’re all the children of GE employees and have been part of the company’s new Coding for Kids program, which has run through term two, one afternoon a week. GE has long been an active supporter of STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—education in tertiary institutions, and is now making sure its education initiatives target younger students, too. “It’s being driven by Geoff Culbert, our CEO,” explains Emma Milburn, project manager of employee experience for GE Australia and New Zealand, who’s running the Coding for Kids program, featured in this video. “It started at the end of 2014. Geoff was very keen that we offer a coding program to employees’ children.”
Code will be a second language for today’s primary-school kids. Unlike learning the tongue of another country and having to travel there to really put it to work, coders can reap the benefits of their new language immediately, wherever they are.

From term three, GE is taking Coding for Kids to the wider community, with a pilot program in a local primary school near the company’s Melbourne office. “We provide the resources and they provide the children,” says Milburn, adding that the hope is to take Coding for Kids into primary schools in most other Australian states by the end of the year. “We reach a lot more children, but we also reach the teachers. Those teachers are then comfortable that next year and the year after, they can deliver the course.”

“We’re teaching Scratch, developed by MIT in the US,” says Milburn. The MIT Media Lab makes Scratch and all of its course materials available for free, with downloadable  curriculum guides and worksheets. The GE employees’ Coding for Kids ran in Sydney and Melbourne after school for children in Years 3 to 6; the school pilot program will capture all primary-school classes, and will run during curriculum time. “As well as lessons for the children, we’ll do debrief sessions with the teachers, to make sure that they’ve got an opportunity to clear up anything that they’re not certain of, so they can be confident to teach it next term,” says Milburn. She has an exciting revelation for teachers and parents: “The great thing about Scratch is you don’t have to know how to code to teach it. The program is very self-contained and it gives the fundamentals of coding; you just need to know how to deliver it, which is what we’re trying to help the teachers with.”

Milburn says that GE is walking the talk with that anyone-can-code claim: the tutors lending their time to Coding for Kids are from the GE Volunteers Program, and while it’s true that some are from the company’s IT and software-development teams, coding newbies from marketing and communications are in there, too. “The materials are very good,” enthuses Milburn, “and anyone can access them”. Parents eager to take part can find plenty of inspiration on the Scratch MIT site.

Code will be a second language for today’s primary-school kids. Unlike learning the tongue of another country and having to travel there to really put it to work, coders can reap the benefits of their new language immediately, wherever they are, as well as ensuring that their education is fit for any purpose when they enter the workforce in a decade or less.