Codetoday September News: Goodbye Summer. Hello School.

The week that straddles the end of August and the beginning of September is a rather unique week at codetoday HQ. It's one of the very few weeks throughout the year when we don't run any courses. You can almost sense the quiet. The busy summer is over, with sessions running every day throughout the summer months, from morning to evening. We all need this week to recharge our batteries and get ready for the Autumn term.

And the Autumn term has now started, with weekly coding courses running until half term, and then again after half term. And of course, October half term coding is only round the corner! This is as good a time as any for an update on some codetoday September news.

Goodbye Summer

This summer has been the busiest summer we've ever had. Our schedule included six packed weeks of Live Online courses, teaching coding in Python to children and teenagers as young as 7, and all the way to 16 year olds, and a bit more!

Our courses spanned our entire curriculum. We had beginners and intermediate levels from Level 1 to 6, at all age groups, and the Higher Level courses for those who have completed the first six levels. We're very proud to able to offer these granular stages in our curriculum, starting from the basics but also moving to more intermediate and advnaced material and projects.

We need to thank our loyal students, and their parents, who make this approach possible. Most of our students progress from Level 1 to later levels, which means we can offer a very regular schedule of courses at all levels and at all age groups.

The summer may be over—although at the time of writing we have the long-awaited heatwave that we've been waiting for all summer here in the UK—but our full schedule of courses which span the whole curriculum will continue all year around.

Hello School

September news means it's back to school news. Many students are experiencing a return to normality at school—or close enough—this term. And the codetoday September news is that our weekly courses have also returned!

This term, as in previous terms, we're running our Live Online courses for the first four weeks of term, and then two weeks of codetodayEXPLORE sessions for those who want a bit more coding and a bit more practice.

Although the weekly courses will have a break over half term, the October half term coding courses come in to fill the gap. So, for those students who don't want to stop, they can mix-and-match weekly and holiday courses.

Higher Level Courses and The Codetoday Curriculum

Over the summer, we ran our very first Higher Level Python coding courses. These courses extend the curriculum beyond the beginner and intermediate stages offered in Levels 1 to 6. Higher Level courses focus on a single coding topic or a single theme, often working on longer and more complex projects.

We have structured our Higher Level courses so that each one is a standalone course. This means students don't need to attend these courses in any particular order, as long as they have completed Levels 1 to 6 of our curriculum.

Topics we've covered over the summer include Object-Oriented Programming for the older students, graphics-based quizzes and a 2D arcade-style game. All these projects introduce new topics or new coding methods that help students move to the next level.

We're planning to have a large number of different Higher Level courses that will run throughout the year, including some courses that focus on scientific programming and data science for the older students, as this is an exciting area in which Python coding has a key role in the real world!

The Codetoday Community

Our Codetoday Community is expanding and becoming busier with codetoday students asking questions, answering other students' questions, posting their code for feedback, and more.

The Community is our way of supporting our students beyond the live sessions and the additional material which we provide along with our Live Online courses. In the Community, students can post their code and ask questions if they're stuck, and our team of instructors can provide help and support.

This Community is a closed forum for codetoday students which we monitor closely. It's a safe and friendly way for students to learn to interact with online forums in addition to getting support from us, and from their peers.

Coding in The Real World

Coding is growing in the real world as well as in children's education. More and more professions are increasing how much they rely on coding, from science to finance, journalism to law, health and medicine, and many more.

We will start a series of posts in the next few weeks in which we'll interview people in non-programming jobs who use programming as part of their work. We'll also have some full-time programmers in there, too, as they're also important!

In the meantime, here's an article from Physics World that talks about the increasing importance of coding in Physics: Standing on the shoulders of programmers: the power of free and open-source software.

Codetoday September News: Final Words

That's all for our codetoday September news round-up. A reminder that if you're still unsure as a parent what this coding stuff is all about and what your children are learning in this subject, you can read our Parents' Guide to Coding and you can always get in touch with us. We're always very happy to talk to parents about coding. It's a subject we love, after all!