SNL’s Amy Poehler and her Smart Girls organization have teamed up with Lenovo to use gaming as a vehicle to help teach kids (boys and girls) to learn to program for free.
Lenovo’s Game State site allows kids to learn code development at their own pace while having fun at the same time. To advance through three immersive worlds and 142 levels, kids learn to code in languages like Python, JavaScript, Lua and CoffeeScript in real time.
Explains Nick Winter, Co-Founder/CEO of Code Combat:
“Kids who become part of the Code & Play online community at LenovoGameState.com cover most of the programming concepts from the first two computer science courses for CS majors from many universities. They may be middle or high school students, but with game-based learning, they’re motivated to obtain even higher levels of knowledge.”
They won’t just learn programming skills, but they can win prizes too. Each level they complete counts as an entry in a contest to win $5,000 in prizes, including a $2,500 scholarship to a coding school or camp, and Lenovo products.
If your children would like to try this free, learn-to-code-while-you-play resource, sign-up at LenovoGameState.com between now and March 31 which is the deadline to enter for a chance to win the Grand Prize Drawing.
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Whenever kids learn to code the world gets better. My wife and I do our best to encourage our young daughter to explore STEM-style problem solving, deep thought, and code-like challenges and she loves them! We thought too much was over our kids’ heads for too long but they’re showing us that they can handle it and thrive! Plus it helps to do it in a fun way like Amy is doing.
Anyone can learn to code nowadays with so many free online resources like the ebook at http://www.brainstemschool.com or the tutorials at code.org and Khan Academy. There’s no excuse really not to be literate in code which can enhance your live.