The EU Code Week is a grass-roots movement that celebrates creativity, problem solving and collaboration through programming and other tech activities. The idea is to make programming more visible, to show young, adults and elderly how you bring ideas to life with code, to demystify these skills and bring motivated people together to learn.

EU Code Week is part of a wider effort on behalf of the European Commission to boost technological skills. A Europe Fit for the Digital Age: Empowering people with a new generation of technologies is one of the 6 new priorities of the European Commission announced for 2019-24. In line with developments around the world, the skills expected for the workforce are frequently changing. The general skills published in the World Economic Forum are analytical thinking skills, problem solving skills, creativity and use of technology. In order to gain these skills, coding and STEAM education activities at an early age and teacher training are important.

On the occasion of the EU Code Week 2021, the European Commission supported the organisation of a bicommunal coding training of teachers. The training, entitled “Let's STEAM Together!” brought together educators from both communities to explore creativity, problem solving and collaboration through coding. The training was the result of a collaboration between EU Infopoint, Mathisis.org and Happy Learners Centre.

The event was an introductory training programme for teachers of all ages and branches to coding activities in order to increase the interest and curiosity of teachers, to answer their questions and to increase their coding skills. Participants were provided with resources and information for promoting the teaching and learning of coding in schools. The training programme covered the following themes: plugged and unplugged coding resources, important websites, funding opportunities for schools, robotics programming, and hands-on activities to support intercommunal collaboration. As a result of the training programme, almost 100 teachers from two communities were provided with resources and valuable information for promoting the teaching and learning of programming in their schools. 

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