Stornoway is set to host its first ever Moonhackathon on Friday 20th July. The Code Club Moonhack is an annual event which aims drive interest in coding for children aged between 8-18 years.

Moonhack was launched in 2016 by Code Club Australia and has since grown from strength to strength. In 2016 the event set a record with 10,207 kids coding on a single day. One year on, in 2017, the event grew to become a global phenomenon and saw over 28,000 children participate from a host of nations.

Code Club says it expects this years event to be the largest ever and aims to break yet more records.

Engaging Kids in Coding

Moonhack’s annual events offer children from around the world a valuable opportunity to test their metal and develop an interest in coding. It offers four main projects – all of which are space themed and aimed at various lunar landing and travel tasks. The Python Project requires participants to write a program that displays the names of every moon for each planet in the solar system. Jupiter alone has a staggering 63 moons, so naturally, this is whopping task.

Scratch aims to simulate the first moon landing, some 49 years ago, requiring kids to create and carry out their own lunar landing. Other projects, GameFroot and Micro:bit also allow participants to build a program that identifies the optimal lunar landing site and navigate their way through the perilous asteroid belt that separates Mars and Jupiter.

Stornoway Coding

The Moonhackathon is part of the library Code Club and will take place in The Space at Stornoway Library. Initially, one single session was planned from 10.30 am until noon, however due to popular demand a second session has been added to the event and is expected to attract more attendees. The special Code Club sessions are aimed primarily toward children with little to no experience in coding and will see participants build their own lunar landing module as part of the Scratch project.

Code Clubs around the world play a valuable role in engaging kids in computing from an early age. Thousands of clubs scattered across more than 100 countries are helping to enable and educate kids across a broad spectrum of backgrounds and languages – with club projects having been translated into 28 languages.

Since 2012 alone, at least 6,000 Code Club’s have been registered in the UK, teaching and engaging over 90,000 kids.

To Infinity and Beyond (Through VR)

The date of the Moonhackathon is particularly meaningful as it is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Legendary figures, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the famous lunar module, Eagle, on the 20th July 1969 and propelled mankind into a new age of stellar exploration. In addition to the Moonhackathon, those in attendance will also have the opportunity to experience the Apollo 11 moon landing themselves through virtual reality.

This hour-long event is a stellar experience for participants, who will be able to see the lunar landing through the eyes of the astronauts involved nearly 50 years ago.

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