Today, about seven hundred citizens of Vilnius aged 6-14 joined the "Hour Of Code" initiative and celebrated technology together with more than 100 million like-minded people from all over the world. Children rushed to the programming session at the National Martynas Mažvydas Library carrying tablets and laptops and immediately immersed themselves in attractive creative programming tasks.
"Hour of Code is a good example of getting kids interested in doing more than usual. From a student, a child becomes a creator here, who turns his curiosity into a result in one hour. It's nice that so many open and quick young people of Vilnius are gathering for the second year to create and program a better future for all of our city, and this great initiative is growing - it's already expanding from Vilnius to Kaunas, Klaipėda. We also strongly encourage children to be creatively and interestingly introduced to IT technologies and programming in schools in the capital, to interest them in being not only users of technology, but also creators," said the mayor of Vilnius. Remigius Šimašius, visiting the technology festival with his children.
Those gathered at the celebration were greeted with an inspiring slogan - "If you can create technology, you can change the world." About 70 mentors from Vinted, Treatwell, Danske, IBM, Robotics Academy, etc. The mentors had a very important mission - to interest and inspire the children who gathered for one hour to try fun and ever-improving programming tasks. Mentors this year were not only well-known developers in the world of technology, but also gifted children. Kristijonas Augustas and Lucrecija (11-12 years old), who have been attending the programming club "bit&Byte" for several years, were happy that this year they will be able to help their peers overcome increasingly complex tasks with the heroes of popular games and teach them the basics of programming.
According to Monika Katkutė-Gelžinė, founder of the creative technology academy for children "bit&Byte", the organizer of this initiative, today at least 1000 children in Lithuania got up early in the morning and were more cheerful because they hurried to the "Hour Of Code" celebration, where they could try the basic functions of programming, work with "Minecraft" , learning JavaScript programming language with Star Wars characters, with Princess Vaiana from the new Disney cartoon.
.jpg)
Rita, a mentor working at the start-up TRAFI, explained what 6-7-year-old children will do during the programming hour: through a simplified form of the game, by pushing blocks, the little ones will understand what an algorithm is, commands for the computer, cycles, conditions and what can be done with technology.
In total, in Vilnius, Beautiful, Klaipėda and in 30 regional libraries over 1500 children simultaneously immersed themselves in programming tasks, more than 100 million worldwide.
