With “Le Campus Junior”, Samsung Offers Kids Between 7 and 13 a Fun and Free Introduction to Computer Programming

“Le Campus Junior” by Samsung gives children the opportunity to learn computer programming and to create their own interactive stories and games. This free and interactive online platform is designed to teach children how to use Scratch*, the development platform created by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), to help them take their first active steps in the digital world.

A Fun Way to Learn Computer Programming

Through approximately 40 short and fun video tutorials (four hours of play overall), “Le Campus Junior” invites children to discover the main concepts of computer programming by following the adventures of Professor Misso along with Sam and Zoé, two cute, smart and mischievous children.

Once the registration process is approved by their parents, children can follow the learning path and pick up where they left off when signing back in.

“Le Campus Junior” offers self-paced learning modules of Scratch*: ranked by difficulty, the tutorials in the “I learn” section explain the main programming steps while those in “I practice” offer fun workshops to reinforce what has been learned. Children also have the opportunity to evaluate their knowledge by taking quizzes by level — beginner, intermediate and advanced — and earning the respective badges.

“Le Campus Junior’s” training path and educational content were developed by Tech Kids Academy, a specialist in designing creative digital workshops for young people. The course aims to gradually introduce key programming concepts with Scratch* and then allow children to imagine their own games.

To discover the Campus Junior approach, the “First Steps in Scratch” tutorial is available directly on the website homepage: www.lecampusjunior.fr

Educational Tools to Support Trainers and Educators

“Le Campus Junior was originally designed for children, but educators quickly started using the site’s content to teach basic programming concepts. Therefore, we decided to develop dedicated educational tools to help them achieve this,” explains Florence Catel, director of corporate citizenship at Samsung Electronics France.

Trainers have access to the same content as that offered to children, but they also have free access to a comprehensive toolbox designed around a dozen IT concepts: position, movement, loops, conditional structures, variables, random numbers, and more.

The “Toolbox” section includes:

Practical Guides

• Concepts: an overview table allows trainers to see the computing concepts presented in each of the video tutorials;
• Search tool: multi-criteria search quickly identifies the tutorials covering the concepts the trainer wants to introduce to the children;
• Educational resources: explanation sheets, “Step by Step” guides and all video tutorial scripts can be downloaded, for flexible use of “Le Campus Junior’s” content.

Group Creation and Tracking of Children’s Progress

By this September, a new section called “My Groups” will allow trainers to create groups of children to track their progress and assess their understanding of the various concepts, based on the quiz results.

Samsung Electronics: A company Committed to Education and Training in the Digital Field

“Le Campus Junior” demonstrates Samsung Electronics’ commitment to education and training in France. It follows the opening in September 2014 of the “Samsung Campus”, a socially engaged training center which aims to develop the digital industry skills of young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 through a tuition free program. With “Le Campus Junior”, younger children have the opportunity to discover the world of computer programming for free.

In France, computer programming is already offered as a extra-curricular activity in schools, highlighting the importance of digital technology in today’s society. Introducing children to coding helps them develop a number of fundamental skills, such as logic and mathematics. It also opens up a new world of creativity, where they can let their imaginations run wild, create their own games and share them with their family and friends.

*Scratch was developed by the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group (see http://scratch.mit.edu). Use of this content is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 licence.

About TECH KIDS ACADEMY

TECH KIDS ACADEMY is a leading French digital academy for children from age 7, based in Paris and Saint Germain en Laye. For more information: http://www.techkidsacademy.com/