This year’s “Hour of Code” action met all expectations of the organizers when it comes to the number of interested people since over 40,000 children and young people from 45 BiH municipalities participated in the event. For the third year in a row, BiH is the first in the region by the number of individual Hour of Coding events.
The Center for Civil Society Promotion encourages children and young people to take the first steps in programming and coding, as it is very important to keep in mind that IT is one of the most profitable and promising professions in the future, not only here but in the world. It is very encouraging for the CCSP to realize that every year more and more people are interested in coding and IT sectors,” said Aida Daguda, Director of the CCSP.
International Burch University has supported this project as one more in a series of youth projects. Professors and students from the University mentored high school students and elementary students and helped them make their first codes. „Many students choose to study at Information Technology Department at Burch University because it is a profession of the present and the future, and our students start working in their second year of study,” said Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mersid Poturak, Rector of International Burch University.
Due to the achieved results, the following schools were able to enter the final round of the competition: Primary school „ 1. March ˮ, Vrnograč, Primary School „ Sokoljeˮ, Sarajevo, Primary School „ Zalikˮ, Mostar, and high schools: Gazi Husrev-beg’s Madrasa, Sarajevo, High School of Electrical Engineering, Mostar and Technical High School of Graphic Design and Multimedia Technology, Sarajevo.
In the primary school category, third place went to Sarah Pašalić, second place to Amer Vatreš, and first place to Mirza Korač. In the high school category, third place went to Anela Šubo, second place to Nedžad Ibrahimović and first place to Davud Hondo.
In addition to these awards, the most active students were selected. In the category of primary schools, Nadija Idrizović was chosen as the most active student, and Husein Marić was chosen as the most active student from high school.
The partners of the project were BH Telecom and DIDAKTA Ltd. which provided prizes to participants, as well as Microsoft, International Burch University and American Corner.
“Hour of Code” is a project that will continue to be implemented next year in the hope that the number of applicants will be even greater and results better.
“Hour of Code” is a global, non-profit organization called Code.org designed to gain first-hand programming experience and launched with the goal of demystifying computer science and programming. Special tutorials provide young people with up-to-date knowledge and teach them special tools and different technologies that will help them in their future education and employment. CCSP has been the official code.org partner of BiH since 2014. The IT Education Week is organized every year in December, the month in which Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815), the British mathematician and first programmer in the world, was born, and Grace Murray Hopper (9 December 1906), a pioneer in computer science, who popularized the term bug and led to the development of COBOL, a programming language still in use today.
