At Code IRL, we are on a mission...

     Our society is experiencing a computer science driven revolution that is redefining our world at an incredible speed. We can see this from how shopping is being redefined by Amazon to how driving is being redefined by Tesla. Technologies such as artificial intelligence that were previously thought to be fictional are now becoming increasingly realistic through computer science.

 

      Unfortunately, our education system is not adapting fast enough to prepare our students to thrive in this emerging future dominated by computer science.  Currently, students are typically introduced to computer science in their freshman year of college and are expected to quickly pick it up over the next four years of their college career. This is extremely counterintuitive to how we teach other subjects. All other subjects from English to Mathematics are taught much earlier on because it is understood that it takes time to build critical thinking skills in those subjects. With computer science, students are not only introduced to it much later but are also not given sufficient time to build deep critical thinking skills. This limits their ability to take full advantage of their computer science education and makes it difficult for them to find jobs despite there being a large demand for computer scientists. 

​

     At Code IRL, we are on a mission to change this by introducing students to computer science earlier on at the middle school level to kickstart their computer science journey. Allowing them time to develop their “computational mind” and giving them a much higher chance of success in their computer science journey. 

​

     To achieve this, we re-envisioned the traditional approach to teaching computer science. Traditionally computer science is taught using high level mathematics and logical operations. However, this is not very practical at the middle school level. Using inspiration from MIT’s and Harvard’s introductory programing classes, we developed a comprehensive curriculum that provides middle schoolers with a conceptual understanding of computer science at the level of a college introductory computer science class. Our curriculum teaches computer science concepts through engaging projects that combine visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles. We use a smaller focused learning environment to give each student the right amount of individual attention. 

​

     Affordability and accessibility are at the core of our mission. We understand that not everyone can afford a computer science course every summer. Therefore, we designed our curriculum to build a strong computer science foundation that will allow our students to continue their computer science journey on their own by taking advantage of the already existing computer science resources. Additionally, financial aid is an important part of our admissions process because we want to ensure that a student’s financial circumstances does not impede their ability to gain a quality computer science education.