Primary school children from around the district were building their own app over three days, from Monday-Wednesday, programming a character to run, jump, fly and change directions all by writing computer script.
On Monday, the children were learning the basics and creating their own virtual landscape for characters to roam in.
‘‘Today we’re teaching them coding, it’s the language of the computers and telling a computer what to do, as well as creating a game which they can play,’’ Camp Code head teacher Kacey Pike (pictured) said.
‘‘It’s gone really well and we’ve had all levels of kids, some kids have taken to it a bit quicker than others and so we get to work together helping them advance and helping others who might need it.’’
Ms Pike said while their characters were running across the screens, the children still had to program the character to change direction, which was the next lesson.
‘‘They’re going to come away with a full game they can play at home, having the experience of coding and knowing how to create their own game,’’ she said.
Code Camp was founded in 2013 where eight kids attended the first camp. Five years later, Code Camp has had 47,000 kids attend camps across 200 schools in Australia and is expecting more than 5000 enrolments in these school holidays alone.
After the three-day Code Camp, students had their own app to show family and friends and access to Code Camp World, the platform they used to create the app so they can further their coding skills at home.
‘‘We have seen an increase in the number of enrolments in our camps as parents are beginning to realise that coding is an important skill to equip their children with to provide them with more opportunities in the future,’’ Code Camp chief operating officer, Hayley Markham said.
The program offers different levels for children of all abilities.
In the most advanced levels, for children who have attended previous camps, they will create a game using world-first 3D technology, in augmented reality programmed in 3D using pure JavaScript.
These summer holidays Code Camp launched their Web Hackers workshop where kids as young as seven will code their own website.