Community Update  ·  June 17, 2021

Wrap Up: Virtual CodeDay Spring 2021

Lola Egherman, VP, Programs & Engineering

Junes CodeDay was awesome — heres how it went!

Over 500 students came together and worked on nearly 100 different projects in just 48 short hours.

Every CodeDay, we are blown away and amazed at the level of creativity, technical skill, and dedication present in students projects, and this season was no different!

Students made all kinds of unique projects, collaborating with friends they just met, getting help from mentors and workshops, and making all kinds of awesome projects, such as BioPass, a password manager that you unlock with a personalized gesture – or Thorns: A Lost Conversation, a visual novel where your words deal physical damage.

Not every project was exclusively software, either! Thanks to Digi-Key electronics, we were able to inspire students to write code for the physical world as well, such as The First Beat – a rhythm game integrated with Alexa, Interactive CPR training, a tool to teach people CPR in a hands-on manner, or The Wonderful Weather Wizard, a fully-featured weather station complete with hand-made pixel art animations to display different weather conditions!

Wed love to keep talking about more amazing projects, like DJ frog (an adorable dancing frog companion made with from Digi-Key components), or Battle Bot (a bot that lets you have RPG-style battles with other people in a Discord server), but why do that when you could take a look yourself at all the projects on CodeDay Showcase!

Our Discord community was constantly active, with students helping each other and collaborating with other students. Our pre-CodeDay beginner workshops helped set our attendees up for success and ensure they were prepared and encouraged to challenge themselves as well as strive for ambitious (yet achievable) goals. Students who showed up to CodeDay hesitant came out of CodeDay with more ideas, confidence, and determination to attempt coding in the future!

I was expecting CodeDay to be boring and lame, but I’m really glad to be proven wrong

You guys really know how to get kids excited and into programming

Diva S, First time CodeDay Attendee

CodeDay isnt all work and no play, either. Throughout the weekend, we held several fun events to keep students engaged, such as CodeCup, a capture-the-flag style cybersecurity challenge, or the Big Data Challenge (presented by LexisNexis Risk Solutions), a competition where students learn how to analyze and solve big data problems using real-world examples.

If youre a teacher, and think that CodeCup or the Big Data Challenge sound like a tool you would like to use in your classroom, get in touch! Both events are just an hour long and can be done entirely online. Send an email to schools@codeday.org – well work with you to figure out a plan that works best in your classroom.

To LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Digi-Key, and every single one of our sponsors: Thank you! Without your support, CodeDay would not be possible, and thousands of students would have never been inspired to discover new paths in tech! We love showing students new avenues, languages, opportunities, and watching students grow in our ever-expanding CodeDay community.

The next CodeDay will be held the weekend of November 12th – See you there!

-The CodeDay Team 

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