Coding Pirates – Story-Telling and Tech-Imagination Facilitator for Children

In this nowadays rapid growth of technology, this is very common that children are greatly exposed with many different gadgets, tech devices, and social media. However, do these sophisticated gadgets provide them a sense of understanding about social education and imaginative story telling? Coding Pirates will help to facilitate those needs.

Ethenia Novianty Windaningrum

June 4, 2015

On Thursday, June 4th 2015 Coding Pirates, a company that provides educational tech-based games for children was exhibiting a game named Diorama in Ridehuset, Aarhus. With Diorama game, according to Rikke Berggreen Paaskesen, Co-Project Leader at Coding Pirates, children will be able to do story-telling and programming together. Rikke mentioned that during that day the groups of children who were interacting with Diorama game were 12-years old children and they were good in playing the game with a focus mind. Rikke added that Coding Pirates in the previous time and another event, for example, was exhibiting another game about a Future Land of which the children can imagine about a good future and how the children can do better in the society, by helping people and do something for the nature. A Future Land is an example where the children can be critical about the condition in the society while having fun with the technology.

“We’re working once a week with the children, we work 2 hours with the children programming. And they get introduced to one technology at one time. For example, when they are in a group with LEGO Mindstorms, they learn to program with LEGO Mindstorms, how can I make reaction with the color or with the sound…” said Rikke.

Rikke mentioned that for instance, small children could be given a game that educates about endangered animals, and older groups of children could be given a game that digs down the higher and deeper level of problem solving skill, like a game that involves a certain context happened in a society. The point is Coding Pirates wants to tell the children that “I can do what I want my computer, and not the computer that has a power over me”. Another thing is that Coding Pirates wants to build is a conscious thought about structures of things happened in the children’s lives, that can be in the daily life, at school, or the situation that will happen in the workplace later in the future. So this can be said as a challenge within pedagogy area in how we will be involved when we are playing with the technology, elaborating mindset and consciousness of what happens around us.

Right now Coding Pirates is currently working with 365 children in total in some cities in Denmark. Coding Pirates is on mission to bring this spirit further to more and more children and even there is a possibility to tap into formal education when the teachers can also give a time and space for this technology-based game concept to be applied. Of course it will be easier to implement this when the teachers can understand this game and concept well before they present it to the children at school.

This article was written based on the event: Digital Dannelse