15 May 2022

On Sunday, 15 May 2022, the North Asia Center of Asia-Pacific Excellence and Education New Zealand (ENZ) partnered with Code Avengers to deliver their first-ever intercultural code camp between Japan and New Zealand high school students. Photos from this event feature a tower-building activity in which student and teacher teams raced to build the highest tower together.

Waseda University Senior High School students in Japan, and Te Kura Māori O Porirua students in New Zealand, spent the day learning how to build their websites. Student teams selected one of the United Nation’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals as the focus for their website, applying code learnt to develop and stylize their projects. The teams then presented and showcased their finished sites to each other in an online debrief session the following Thursday.

Speakers on the Debrief day included ENZ Regional Manager of East Asia, Ben Burrowes and ENZ’s Director of Education – Japan, Misa Kitaoka. Teachers from the two participating schools, along with representatives from CAPE and ENZ, acted as Judges and provided constructive recommendations and positive comments about each team presentation, ultimately helping select a winning team from each country. Steve Budd of Code Avengers worked online with both sides to deliver the camp. Participating observers had this to say about the camp experience:

“I would like to thank (North Asia CAPE and ENZ) for hosting us today. The program was jam-packed with lots of learning and coding to take on board from start to finish. We are very grateful to be participating in the Code Avenger camps – Thank you! We look forward to being able to participate again and interact with other participants.” – 2022 Cross-Cultural Code Camp participant