A Growth Engine for Europe

In the summer of 2015 Google held a series of classes for 5-12 year olds at Google shops in Currys PC World stores in London throughout the holidays. The free classes were designed to introduce them to new digital skills, demystify technology and inspire them to explore coding. In the Scratch coding workshop children learned to build a program to animate their name and use the web to search for visual inspiration and design ideas. All the children who took part were provided with a bangle USB to take their design home to continue work on it and share their experience with friends. Using a MaKey-MaKey circuit board kit and a handful of sweets, students were also taught to create their own beats and rhythms, which were collected into a single track and released on Google Play. They could also explore Google Cardboard to explore virtual reality in a simple and fun way, using the software development kit for Android and Unity to quickly start creating apps and adapt existing applications for virtual reality. At The Art of Experimenting workshop, kids were taught that there is no such thing as a bad idea, by experimenting and then sharing their thoughts on a giant Google Doodle Wall and learning how to have great ideas every time.