Inspiring a Community of Creators: A Collaborative Approach to Teaching Code

Cipher is on a mission to make coding education universal, free and life-changing for youth

Cipher is an innovative youth-led code-oriented community for secondary school students in the Peel Region. The program was created by 4 high schools students and ACCESS is excited to be supporting this innovative concept, after it was presented at Impact Tomorrow's Pitch Competition.

The community the students have created around Cipher will work in tandem to explore, experiment and hack with various programming languages, fostering an engaging community through a season of Cipher Circles and a conference entitled Campfire. An innovation on traditional education, Cipher adopts the element of community from school, but breaks the student-teacher hierarchy, opting for peer-to-peer learning. Consequently, the community offers a more effective model of learning, while maintaining the crucial element of collaboration.

Cipher will introduce enough of a particular language in order for one to hack together a small project, but not delve into mastering it. When learning a programming language, there is exponential growth at first, but it quickly plateaus. Cipher wants to continually hit that stride over a variety of languages.

"Imagine learning to code in a social, inspiring, competitive atmosphere. That's Cipher."

Cipher's primary program is a pilot season that will launch in September. A season is an eight-month term consisting of sessions labeled Cipher Circles. The timeline for each series of Circles will be flexible, accommodating the needs of the community and featuring a different concept/programming language for each series. Cipher Circles will be held at Redwood Marketplace in Brampton.

Cipher's Campfire Conference will be held this August with the aim of discussing community-centric learning with students in the Region of Peel. Speakers will present on topics pertaining to community, education, programming and technology. Cipher promotes learning through an inclusive community; speakers are encouraged to evoke that same atmosphere. We want you to help us create a community of forward-thinkers within the Peel Region. Help us crack the code.

You have the drive, ability and smarts to be a changemaker, we just want to help make it happen.

Learn more about Cipher and sign up for their launch announcement at ProjectCipher.ca.