BridgeBuilder Education & Investments is pleased to announce South Georgia Medical Center (SGMC) as the top sponsor of its innovative program called “Code The Classroom” that provides instructors and hands-on coding projects directly to local students. The initiative helps bridge the gap for students and teachers who are not as comfortable with coding or do not have exposure to computer science themes on a regular basis.

“We thank each of our sponsors and couldn't be happier to have the support of South Georgia Medical Center,” said DeWayne Johnson, Co-Founder of BridgeBuilder Education & Investments. “The partnership of the program sponsors shows their support to help strengthen our education community by promoting the development of computer science talent in our region and will have a great impact on the students as they gear up for learning to code.”

The program's additional sponsors include Dr. Alvin Payton, Hogan's Pharmacy, and Mt. Calvery Missionary Baptist Church.  As the leading sponsor, a representative from South Georgia Medical Center will be the featured guest during the final coding class, where the students present their inventions. 

“South Georgia Medical Center is passionate about supporting the coding initiative with our local youth,” says Johnny Ball, Assistant Administrator of Communications and Public Affairs. “South Georgia Medical Center believes in providing the means to encourage students to embrace their creativity, and we hope that empowering them at such a young age will inspire them to do even greater things down the road. Investing in this cause is an investment in our community’s future leaders.” 

According to the press release, Code The Classroom is designed to reach students, in addition to those in a gifted or STEAM program, who should also be exposed to and familiar with coding in order to become competitive in the future workforce. By providing the instructors, equipment, and curriculum, the BridgeBuilder program is able to lessen the pressure on teachers that may not have a computer science background or simply want to learn how coding works themselves.

The program only requires a commitment of one hour of class time per week. The length of the program depends on the desires of the school and can be as short as 8 weeks or up to 26 weeks. Although math and science classrooms would be natural recipients of the program, Johnson says that Code The Classroom benefits other classrooms just as well.

“Coding is for everyone. The goal is to reach as many students as possible without pigeonholing the type of class or students that gain the experience of coding. For example, Code The Classroom will allow Language Arts students to learn a new form of communication at an early age through computer language and presentation. Social Studies classrooms can create an electronic soccer goal connecting the lesson to the worldwide popularity of the sport,” said Johnson

Code the Classroom is an innovative intro to coding that attracts students through activities they love: making and playing games. Code the Classroom is made possible by the H. DeWayne and Amanda Johnson BridgeBuilder Education Foundation. The program partners with a classroom and set of classroom sponsors in order to conduct a multi-week curriculum using coding kits. 

During the program, students learn to control image, sound, and motion with coding kits. They use loops to make animations and conditional logic to program rules into their games. By the end of the program, students are featured in a presentation of their final product with their peers and invited classroom sponsors.