Coding Pirates educational platform

Coding Pirates is a voluntary organization that wants to provide young people with a platform to strengthen their skills in technology, coding and IT. But it has previously proved quite difficult to teach and motivate young children to take an interest in programming and IT. The reason for this is that many technologies are made by very wise people who do not posses a great educational flair. As a result, the learning curve for children and young people has been far too large when it comes to learning to program. The goal was to create a platform that children and young people could relate to and want to get involved in by drawing inspiration from computer games and gamification.

The plan became a learning platform, which was called the 'Pirate Ship'.

The goal was clear in advance, but that was not the whole journey - there were many different opportunities to realize the project.

Coding Pirates and Morningtrain were part of a creative process, where the requirements specification for the various functions on the platform was continuously concretized through several internal and external workshops.

There was an iterative approach to the graphic work and the preparation of the user interface with ongoing prototypes. Thus, with minimal resources, we were able to test concepts before going all-in on some areas and features. It was in this way, among other things, that we developed an avatar editor for the platform, which today is one of the most popular features.

In addition, gamification became an important part of the solution; how could we keep the curiosity and motivation of the young people at bay - even as the learning material became more and more complicated? The answer was continuous implementation of gamification elements.

The 'Pirate Ship' project was launched and presented on time after a 9-month long project, where Coding Pirates were subsequently left with exactly the platform they had hoped for.

Particularly popular was an avatar editor, where the children themselves can tailor their personal avatar with eg. glasses and hats. These items were continuously "unlocked" when the children achieved various milestones by using the platform. Thus, the children were able to distinguish themselves visibly to each other by the fact that their personal avatars became more and more cool the more they had learned on the platform.

Furthermore, it was made possible for the many children and young people to upload their own code projects via a sharing page, where it could provide inspiration to others.

Today, the platform is available to the organization's 2,750 active members and the +800 volunteers in the organization.