The Urban Coders partner with A House on Beekman

The Urban Coders visited to the South Bronx and introduce coding to middle school students for the first time. The students at “A House on Beekman” were all impressed and had their intellect challenged while coding with Minecraft. “A House on Beekman” seeks to support the children and families of the South Bronx in New York City by delivering holistic long-term care and services to break the cycles of spiritual, emotional, educational and economic poverty. These children came to understand that, with coding, they can create video games! They learned something new and had to put their thinking caps on. The children from “A House on Beekman” were very enthusiastic to learn how to code by playing Minecraft. They were amazed to see how they were moving the Minecraft character Alex and Steve across the screen by using blocks that had Java coding inside to play the game. Some of the children had a harder time than others to fully comprehend what to do next, luckily they were put together in pairs to help each other figure out what to do next. Through asking each other questions they were able to build on each others strengths.  This was an excellent experience to all of the students because they could not wait for the next time when Mohammed would come back and assist them on improving their skills.

We at The Urban Coders experienced these students to enjoy coding using Minecraft so much that they expressed that they can’t wait to return and extent their education using this platform. They love to play video games and by playing games it’s a great way to learn something new. Most people believe that coding is very challenging and there is a lot of critical thinking involved, but taking your time and trying to fully grasp it doesn’t happen right away. However, with a lot of practice and hard work it can be very easy using the right tools. It is proven that learning to code really strengthens the mind. Unfortunately, many of our urban youth aren’t exposed to this amazing opportunity on a regular basis. These children were laughing and enjoying themselves while learning to code and seeing what they are actually capable of in this environment.

We look forward to providing these Urban youths the opportunity to expend their minds with coding in the upcoming session this week.

Published on: Feb 27, 2018