OUR STORY
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MathAndCoding during COVID19 Pandemic
As the world came to a sudden halt with the COVID-19 pandemic, we were disappointed because all our plans for the organization to reach out to rural areas came to an end. However, we are happy and proud of our quick transition to virtual classes by collaborating with San Jose and Sunnyvale public libraries in order to develop a remote curriculum. In fact, we are doing more classes now than ever as most of the kids are home. |
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MathAndCoding was born in February 2014 When we got this idea to teach kids coding through free library workshops, we approached many librarians. Mrs. Karin Bricker, the Children's Services librarian at the Mountain View Public Library decided to give us a chance to put our idea into action. Our first class was a Coding For Kids workshop for elementary school students. The enthusiasm that kids showed for visual programming inspired us to reach out to more libraries! |
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Soon, as we started workshops in more and more libraries, we realized we needed to recruit and teach more teen volunteers. Over the course of three years, we've expanded our team from the three of us to the 50+ volunteer team we have today! Our volunteers define our organization.
Photo: Teacher Training Session at the San Mateo Library. Anika and Nikash trained several high school girls to teach Python and Coding for Kids in a day-long training camp |
We've added Robotics, Python, App Development, Arduino, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and many more workshops to our curriculum!
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We made an effort to reach out to underrepresented youth from minority neighborhoods. As part of this effort, we started offering workshops at the Alum Rock, Biblioteca Latino Americana, Bascom, and East Palo Alto libraries. We've also partnered with LIFTT and the CNC to bring workshops to new neighborhoods!
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Collaboration with LinkedIn and AdobeWe've collaborated with LinkedIn and Adobe, hosting workshops on both campuses to introduce young kids to coding. Our six-hour workshops were attended by more than 250+ kids.
LinkedIn invited us again to prepare a curriculum to teach in their outreach program. That program was attended by youth high school students from low-income neighborhoods. In addition to developing the curriculum for the day-long workshop, we also gave them a presentation on the resources and options they have for learning to code. |
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We launched our own board game, codingFarmers. This game teaches kids programming concepts in a fun way. Our Kickstarter campaign raised $7500 to build and produce the games! The game is on Amazon now and all profits from the sales go towards improving our organization.
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Summer camps are our major highlights. We usually organize more than 20+ camps (each with 3-5 sessions) every summer. This includes day camps, technology days, and weekend camps.
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Although most of our workshops teach coding, we do conduct periodic math camps for underrepresented youth. Our Green Math camp at the Alum Rock Library was a huge success. We taught math to a group of 1-4th graders from the East San Jose neighborhood. The camp used a fusion of online math and worksheets to get maximum productivity. We offer Math Matters program regularly to Bascom and Tully Library neighborhood kids.
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We started collaborating with community centers and outreach organizations to reach out to minority neighborhoods. We collaborate with Columbia Neighborhood Center, LIFTT Inc., and Sunday Friends.
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We train(remotely, using Google Chat and WebEx) librarians and teen volunteers located outside of the Bay Area as well. Libraries in Fort Worth, Gilroy, Roseville, Mendocino, and Atlanta started Coding For Kids programs with our training.
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Online Python workshop and Python Challenges
To reach kids outside the Bay Area, we created an online Python workshop. This workshop is exclusively for students in 5th through 8th grade. Kids do the online class and submit their solutions for our challenge programs! We pick a winner for each challenge. Last winter, Karthik, a 5th grader won our challenge. |
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1000+ Learners Online
More than 1000 students from across the world have started learning Java online! |
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Mentoring in Hackathons Our team helped the Cupertino Library successfully organize CU-Hacks. We conducted beginner and intermediate coding camps during CU-Hacks, which was a huge success! This year, we partnered with the Cupertino Library for an App Development Contest as well! |
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More Board Games and CodingFarmers.net
We launched our sister organization, codingFarmers.net and another successful Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for two new board games. In this new Kickstarter campaign, we introduced two board games, "Coding is Good" and "Treasure Hunt." We strive to be self sufficient by using the profits from the board game sales to purchase used laptops and other teaching material for our classes |
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Coding is Good - App (iTunes and Google Play) We launched the "Coding is Good" app to reach out to younger kids and kids outside of the Bay Area. The app, with its bite-sized interactive lessons, quirky exercises, real-life examples translated to programs, and hands-on code pad exercises make programming really fun for kids and adults alike. 3200+ downloads so far! |
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Grant from Infosys We received a $10,000 grant from the Infosys Foundation. We have used that grants to purchase laptops for our laptop-lending program. This program enables students, who don't have either a laptop or desktop at home, to loan laptops from us while they are taking our workshops. |
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Where are we now? I am proud to say that we teach coding workshops regularly in 25+ Bay Area libraries. We have 50+ passionate teen teachers who are eager to spread their knowledge of coding to everyone and more than 4500 students started coding with us over 1000+ sessions in the last five years! We are so humbled by the overwhelming support we have received from libraries, parents, students and communities. |
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