Hour of Code Week (7th-13th December)

Just a quick post from us - did you know our Director Dr. Ahmed Kharrufa also works at Newcastle University? He is involved with many things but one, this week, is particularly relevant: SOLE CODE, a computational thinking after-school club. They have organised a brilliant event as 7th-13th December marks Hour of Code Week, organised by Code.org.

From the brilliant SOLE CODE team:

"We are organising a 2-days transcontinental event, where we link 9 - 11 years old children from Amberley Primary School, Newcastle (UK) and John B Russwurm PS197, an elementary school in Harlem, New York (USA) to take part in the international Hour-of-Code.

Day 1:
On Wednesday 9 December (2pm GMT: 9am EST), the children will be taking part in the same Hour-of-Code tutorial at the same time and discussing their progress on Twitter with teachers and researchers from Newcastle University’s SOLE Central using #solehour hashtag (Anne Preston is our Twitter host).

Day 2:
On Friday 11 December (2pm GMT: 9am EST), the two schools will host a SOLE CODE session, during which the children will be connected over Skype. In the SOLE CODE session, we will challenge the children to bug the famous Flappy game. If you do not know the story behind Flappy, this Forbes piece is a good start.

Some of us discovered a possible heritage link and/ or shortcut between Newcastle and New York. They went to explore it (see photos below). They hope to join the connected classroom from the other side of the Ocean next Friday. We wish them best of luck (they need it) with homeland security officers at US borders.

To support us please follow @SOLECODE_NCL, retweet about #solehour and about our connected classroom on Friday."