EU Code Week: the european week for the digital literacy

From the 5th to the 20th October comes to life for the seventh edition the EU Code Week, the european week for the digital literacy. Actually the weeks are two and they want to allow everyone to know the coding, for a higher digital literacy.

“The coding is for everyone, as well as the school”

Welcome to the Europe Code Week

“EU Code Week is a grassroots initiative which aims to bring coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way”.

The EU Code Week is an initiative that starts from the bottom, from an idea of teachers, volunteers and coders that want to involve an ever larger group of people and bring it in the digital world. The initiative is obviusly supported by the European Union, from which it takes the name, and with which it wants to follow a program of digital literacy. In the nowadays world a complete or partial digital illiteracy can be almost considered on a par with the literary one of few decades ago.

“Learning to code helps us make sense of the rapidly changing world around us. Join millions of fellow organisers and participants to inspire the development of coding and computational thinking skills in order to explore new ideas and innovate for the future”.

Digital literacy

First of all let’s give a meaning to the digital literacy, what is it? It’s not only the ability to code but the one to efficiently use the new media, by allowing us to fully partecipate to the digital life of the society.

Nowadays a correct digital literacy is important in many aspects of the citizen life: under the administrative, economic, social and educational point of view. It’s since the 2010, with a report of the European Parliament that the digital literacy became one of the main purposes of a modern society.

The new society in this way integrated in the digital brings many advantages to the citizen by fighting the inequalities and by giving the right instruments for a correct information and education. Finally, strong emphasis was given even to the importance of the digital literacy for the most disadvantaged categories of this new society. Which are the elders, the unemployed, the disabled people, the the poor people.

The teachers of the EU Code Week

The Eu Code Week is mainly focusing on the teachers, in order that them firstly are well-trained so to transmit their knowledges to the students of all the classes. The italian model which put the teachers in the middle of the code week was prompty followed by the whole European Union, that now is focusing the week mainly on the involvement of the teachers and on the active partecipation of many schools.

During the code week, infact, one gives free training courses for the teachers. Starting from the 16th of September, for example, started the CodeWeek Deep-Dive Mooc, to help and to conduct all the teachers that wanted to actively partecipate to the week for the digital literacy, but they didn’t know how to do it.

“The training of the Code Week isn’t only a valid opportunity of personal growth, but even an important signal, because it means the awareness that the investment on the teachers is the most efficient act to invest on the school and on the future”.

Partecipate to the EU Code Week

Once followed the training the teachers could organize their training courses and do it it was easy and efficient. “Anyone is welcome to organise or join an activity”. To do it is easy, it’s enough to choose the topic to deal with and the audience to which it is addressed and to put the even on the map of the Eu Code Week. To partecipate to an activity, instead, is as well really easy: it’s enough to look for the closer events and to subscribe to them.

“Europe CodeWeek is even a party, for everyone. Everyone can support to organise it and everyone can partecipate to it”.

On the map of the Eu Code Week we can find the courses in our area. But for the ones that lost the week for the digital literacy it won’t be late for the next year.

This post is also available in: Italiano