It’s been awhile since I stepped foot in my bank. With online resources and apps, I don’t even have to go there to deposit my checks. But I didn’t realize banks had increased their lobby services to teaching kids how to code…
Okay, not all banks do this. But Barclays, a bank in the UK, has made it a mission to “demystify” coding, and has even trained some of its staff (Barclays Digital Eagles) to provide tw0-hour coding sessions for ages 7-17 in branches across the UK.
Well, that’s great, you think to yourself, but I’m not in the UK. No worries, Barclays has you covered, too. Head on over to Barclays Coding Playground, and you too can practice the basics of coding. Select any of the objects roaming around the screen and you will be directed to change some of its features using lines of code. For example, see the giraffe below? I know. It doesn’t look like a giraffe. That’s because I coded it to have a particularly short neck. Because I could. And because when I made the neck its maximum size the head went off my browser page which made the image a bit more difficult to capture…
The Playground isn’t going to make your child into a coding rockstar, but it is fun and would probably entice anyone who hasn’t programmed before to take a few more steps toward learning more.
If you want more resources for coding, here is my Pinterest page. Also, I will be doing a presentation at TCEA in Austin, Texas, called, “Code Dread,” for those of you who find all of this talk of teaching kids to code slightly disturbing because Barclays wasn’t kind enough to demystify it for you when you were a child 😉
