By Mikayla van Loon
Looking to fill a gap in education, a free coding program is heading to Montrose in early February giving young people the opportunity to learn important maths skills while expanding their imagination.
Charity, Creative Bytes, founded during the lockdowns of the pandemic in 2021, saw a need to increase the offering of coding across the state.
Co-founder Stewart McMillan said this idea snowballed into establishing a curriculum around basic coding for students to learn for free.
“We noticed a lot of students were missing out on STEM based programs, in particular coding,” he said.
“You either had to be in an elite private school, or in a very select public school. If you expand that out around regional Victoria, not many schools are engaging with this.”
From that initial idea came the first Creative Youth Coding Program held in Warrnambool, where the combined foundations of mathematics, design, technology and digital literacy were taught to students aged nine to 12.
“Students just rock up on the day with a laptop. They learn about the xy coordinates, which is a really integral part of Year 7 maths and they walk away with a fully fledged game to share with their friends and family,” Stewart said.
“They get to build their character, their landscape and the narrative…[while learning] about how the character moves, how the character interacts in the environment, and behind all that, it’s all mathematics. It’s all an algorithm.”
Focusing on the age group of roughly Year 4 to Year 6 students, Stewart said builds a knowledge of essential mathematical skills before heading into Year 7.
“We noticed that over 80 per cent of attendees walk away learning a core coding skill that assists them in Year 7 mathematics, which is great.”
Stewart said there is also a high level of girls participating in the coding session, with 40.8 per cent of the cohort being girls, an exciting element of the program, particularly with the emergence of more female superheroes and gaming characters.
Finding that the value of the program remains steady across all communities, Stewart said the only thing that really changes is the previous experience level of the participants.
“We do have some rock up on the day who have experimented with coding, but I’d say the vast majority, especially if you go into very disadvantaged areas and Yarra Ranges isn’t one of those, will have no idea,” he said.
“It’s just such a great feeling to provide this experience to a student that’s never seen this before. Coming to Yarra Ranges I know there will be quite a number who have done a little bit of coding probably on their iPad or on their laptop but usually it’s a good 50/50 split.”
Moving forward in a world of AI and digital technology, Stewart said he wished he was given the opportunity to learn coding at primary or secondary school to benefit his part in the workforce.
“I regret not having the ability to learn about it because I think the current workforce is prevalent in AI, sadly, potentially, depending how it’s mitigated. Many workforces and jobs cater to data engineering and actual coding.
“We are seeing the current workforce change to digital technology, coding in particular, and how AI is being integrated and all those skills are integral to the training block of what we teach, it’s very basic, though, but it gives them a taste of what that’s like.”
Although the program in Montrose is a one off, as funded by Yarra Ranges Council, Stewart said Creative Bytes is in the process of designing a more permanent offering for interested students.
For now, Yarra Ranges young people can access the Creative Bytes workshop on Saturday 3 February at the Montrose Community Centre by visiting trybooking.com/events/landing/1154612
Or to learn more about the program, go to creativebytes.org/creative-youth-coding-program
