Coding, Design, Engineering, and Storytelling (CoDES) is an initiative to make creative coding more accessible and equitable for young children in Nepal, especially those in community and government schools. It does so by integrating coding with children’s local literature. CoDES tries to involve students in projects that reflect their own stories and traditions, using coding as a form of expression rather than just problem-solving.
Karkhana Samuha created a creative coding curriculum to help children learn Scratch and build meaningful projects based on children’s literature belonging to the local communities. The curriculum consists of 12 lessons that adopt a play and project-based learning approach. Students initially work on simpler, prompt-based projects in each individual lesson. Towards the end, they work on a final, culminating project where they adapt stories into more complex animations, stories, games, and other creative forms.
Testimonials
Impact through their eyes
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Students engaged most deeply when they were working on something they had chosen. A prompt with just enough structure to guide without restricting tended to work better than either a freeplay model or a fixed task. Peer learning helped when the classroom culture supported it, but it worked best when students were encouraged to give hints rather than answers.