Scratch Out Poverty 2017

San Diego, CA – The Next Generation of Programmers stepped up to learn how to program in Scratch while also helping “Scratch out Poverty” at ServiceNow! SPARK teamed up with ServiceNow for the holidays to support the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA and the San Diego Food Bank, while also providing opportunities to kids who might not have the chance to learn computer programing. Over the 2 hour class, students built a version of the Brick Breaker game.

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See what they made HERE.

Programming League 2017

SPARK Programming League, Sponsored by STAVE

San Diego, CA – An amazing turnout of new programmers teamed up to build their very own role-playing game (RPG). Each team set out to complete programming goals to earn points to win the competition. They used their presentation skills to show off their newly coded software to a panel of judges. Later, the teams participated in a fast paced event, known as a Hackathon, where they had to build the classic video game Pong in 45 minutes. The teams put their heads together in an effort to accomplish an impressive amount of progress in a short amount of time. To wrap up the day, SPARK celebrated the occasion by giving out pizza, soda, and awards to all the teams.  LEARN MORE about the Programming League.

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You can see what they made HERE.

Spark Programs at the U of A!

Tucson, AZ – On Sunday, November 22nd, kids all around Tucson cooked up some burgers at the University of Arizona with their burger stacking game. Programmers of all ages created this classic app in a 2 hour session.

To see what students projects, click HERE. (They are awesome!)

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SPARK smashes code at CodeSmashXX

San Diego, CA – SPARKprogramming worked with Qualcomm to run CodeSmashXX, a girls-only event to create our favorite classic – Asteroids. “I liked that I was able to design my own custom video game. Its cool to be the one creating the game and not playing it.”

Click here to see the studio of all the projects from this event.

SPARK helped inspire kids at Illumina

San Diego, CA – SPARK helped inspire kids at Illumina’s Bring Your Kids to Work Day by building Virus Invaders.

See the template and the games created here.

SPARK Raises funds for NFAR.org

San Diego, CA – On Saturday, March 14th, one of our instructors, Brenden, taught a Programming for Kids event to raise funds for NFAR as a part of his Eagle Scout Project. Students built a “Race for Autism” game while supporting a great cause! Learn more about NFAR at www.nfar.org.

CLICK HERE for the STUDIO of Projects Created during this event!

SPARK Presents Programming for Kids at MIT!

Boston, MA – On Saturday, January 24th, SPARK Programming was honored to present Programming for Kids at MIT, the birthplace of Scratch! The event, sponsored by ServiceNow partner Cloud Sherpas, provided an introduction to programming by creating a working version of Asteroids!

The projects created were posted for the AM Session and the PM Session – check them out! →

SPARK Hosts “Scratch out Poverty”!

San Diego – About 100 Next Generation Programmers gathered at ServiceNow in San Diego to learn to program in Scratch and raised $1,111 to “Scratch out Poverty”!

FUTURE PROGRAMMERS AT SERVICENOW

Funds raised benefitted the following causes:

• Shelter – Casa Hogar de los Ninos – build a roof for the kids at this orphanage
• Food – Feeding America San Diego – striving to end child hunger in San Diego
• Water – Charity:Water – providing clean water for kids to go to school worldwide

The project we developed mirrored the fund raising and well drilling that helps bring clean water to those that do not have access.

Here are a few of the apps that the students created: http://scratch.mit.edu/studios/298973/

Fruition Programming Day for Kids at ServiceNow!

Special thanks to Fruition Partners for sponsoring the Fruition Programming Day for Kids at ServiceNow! In just 6 days, the event sold out all 110 seats! We had fantastic volunteers from ServiceNow, Fruition Partners and from various San Diego schools. If you missed this event sign up on the interest list and we will send you information on our next event.

From 10 AM to 2 PM, kids of all ages joined in with the global “Scratch Day” to learn more about MIT’s Scratch programming language. Events included:

• An introduction for all “Scratchers” to the new Scratch 2.0 web-based (SaaS) IDE and online safety
• 3 afternoon sessions to choose from including
  • advanced gaming where students built an air-hockey game
  • an animation studio
  • A “Hack-a-thon” where all participants showed off their projects and all got cool shirts

Check out the projects these kids made in only 1 hour!

Here is a video one of the volunteers, Tiffany from ServiceNow, put together in appreciation of the event: