Introducing Code With Us, Online Coding Classes for Kids! | Chicago North Shore Moms

 

Perhaps you’ve heard that learning a new language helps boost the brain’s cognitive skills. Perhaps you’ve also heard that learning a language is easiest during our youth. What about coding? Yep, coding is certainly in that category of new language acquisition! While many schools have yet to activate coding into their curriculum, virtual programs like Code With Us give young students from anywhere in the country the opportunity to acquire this skill.

CNSMoms had the pleasure of hearing from COO and co-founder of Code With Us, Yasser Jilani who breaks down the program from A-Z and explains why learning to code at an early age encourages creative thinking and problem-solving skills.



Hi Yasser! Welcome to Chicago North Shore Moms. please introduce yourself. 

I am Yasser Jilani, the COO and co-founder of Code With Us, a Silicon Valley based EdTech organization that provides technology education to children ages 6 to 18 and develops customized teaching content for educators and corporations. We are one of the largest U.S.-based EdTech orgs, with 7,000+ students and with teaching experience at 60+ school campuses in California. Our entire teaching staff is U.S based Computer Science graduates and students from top universities.

I live in the SF Bay area with my wife and three kids, ages 11, 10 and 5. My job at Code With Us is to build strategies to move our services to more platforms, to reach more students and to reach new geographies. I work with partners to identify current EdTech trends and lead our team to introduce more value-added educational services for students.

 

When was your EdTech company started, and in what cities does Code With Us operate?

We began the Code With Us journey in 2016. From there, we expanded to teach at multiple in-person locations and at 60+ school campuses in the SF Bay and in the greater New York area.

 

What are a few popular topics or classes that students enjoy from Code With Us

We offer classes in 15+ coding languages! Coding Classes are available 7 days a week and we guarantee we can work with your schedule.

Code With Us classes are available for students ages 6 to 18 in various coding topics. Popular topics are Scratch, Roblox (Lua), Minecraft Modding, Python, Java, JavaScript and Arduino. No prior coding experience is needed in our learn to code classes.

 

 

What is the structure of your classes?

We offer ongoing lessons for ages six through 18. Each lesson is one hour long and is conducted privately or in small groups.

We also offer camps for ages six through 18. These occur 4 days or 5 days/week for 3 hrs or 7 hrs per day, any week.

 

What makes Code With Us unique among other coding classes?

Code With Us provides personalized attention to each student and implement project-based learning. Our customized curricula with project focused instructions provide step-by-step guide to students to create games and projects in the coding language of their interests. Our teachers explain and break down steps of the code and its purpose while working collaboratively with students on projects. We focus on game designing projects because these generate a lot of student interests and keep them engaged in the subject.

Our young students really take the challenge, run with it and feel proud. You can visit our Student Spotlight page for student testimonials!

 

 

What was your personal inspiration behind the formation of Code With Us?

In the U.S., we always speak about a shortage of tech workforce and our need for foreign talents to bridge the gap. I strongly believe that we need to invest in tech education to deal with this shortage and it should be a part of early school education. With that in mind, my wife and I were looking for coding schools to enroll our kids to get a head start. To our surprise, we couldn’t find quality instructor-driven resources that would address our needs, and that was the “aha moment” where we realized the market opportunity and our social responsibility to prepare a tech-ready generation for our future.

 

 

Does Code With Us have any brick and mortar locations, or is this entirely online?

Besides online, we provide in-person coding education in the SF Bay and in New York, and also at 60+ school campuses.

 

How do students who take coding classes at Code With Us benefit long-term from instruction in coding?

There are so many long-term benefits of coding education. Here are just a few important ways:

Learning to code boosts academic motivation:
One common challenge children face during school is approaching and succeeding in mathematical and science subjects. Coding is built from these contents, but the fun part is that kids approach them through experiments that result in products they actually like: games and apps. If coding is taught from an early age, the approach to science and math changes completely; they find out that they can do a lot of fun and useful things, thanks to this knowledge.

Learning to code helps children develop problem-solving skills:
Steve Jobs used to say that everyone in the U.S. should learn to program a computer because it teaches you to think. And it does. You might think coding only develops hard skills, like math, but it enhances soft skills, too. Learning to code means that, yes, you have to write the code – a hard skill – but first, you need to know your goal and the best path to arrive there. The path you take can work or not, so children need to face problems and come up with other solutions, like life itself.

 

 

Learning to code helps children learn teamwork, collaboration and mutual assistance:
By coding, kids learn how to fix problems and come up with solutions with others. They learn to ask for help and help others, and in the end, they understand that working together means a better game, app, website or robot.

Learning to code helps children establish critical thinking:
Programming boosts critical-thinking skills because it uses the same process. When coding, you need to conceptualize, analyze and evaluate information to generate an action. Coders do this all the time, and kids can apply critical thinking when programming or exposed to any sort of information.

Learning to code opens up future educational and professional opportunities:
Remember when learning a second language was an extracurricular activity? Well, even today, knowing another language is an important asset in professional life. Being able to code is like a superpower that companies and top universities are already favoring. It just makes a difference. A difference that actually the whole world’s workforce needs.

 

What’s on the horizon for Code With Us?

Code With Us began with the following goals in mind and, and, this will always be on the horizon:

  • To make coding education available and affordable for all.
  • To create awareness and show benefits of Computer Science in early education.
  • To make Computer Science a standard subject at all school campuses globally.

 

How do our parents reach out with more questions about your program?

Please email [email protected]. Or you can Schedule a phone call with us! You can also schedule a FREE trial here. We look forward to connecting with you!

 

 

Thank you to our partner Code With Us for this informative interview. This post is sponsored by Code With Us and does not contain affiliate links.

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