The Coder School Berkeley
Community SubscriberThe Coder School is a year-round after-school coding school for kids ages 8-18. We combine collaboration and immersion with direct instruction by our Code Coaches™ to get your kids learning to code and rockin' their inner hacker in no time! Our mission is to inspire and excite kids to not only learn to code, but think critically about how technology can change our lives in the future. At The Coder School, we want aspiring coders to use their new found passion as a stepping stone to thinking outside the box, as a way to channel their ideas in a creative way and most importantly, to have fun.
Visit our website to join our list and stay up-to-date on upcoming events, registering for classes and enrolling in our summer camps.
Parent Q&A
Parent Reviews
Parents, please Sign in to post a review on this page.I am not familiar with camp Integem, but my son was really happy with the Berkeley Coder School camps that he attended between 10-12. They have nice small group sizes and he enjoyed working with the college-age coaches who mostly come from the Cal Computer Science program. He's an intermediate coder and attended the Roblox, Microbit controllers, and Mobile Madness (phone apps) camps. They do a good job of introducing basic coding concepts and getting the kids working with real tools for coding. For math programs he has also done the Berkeley ATDP math programs, although that is a longer commitment (3 weeks) and the Point Richmond location may or may not work for you. Another option might be Firecracker Math, we did their online summer Math Boost program this past summer and they also have an in person camp as well that may appeal to a math-loving kid. Good luck!
The Coder School has been great for my kid. He is currently working on making his own game in Roblox, and he is signed up for the 3 day winter camp to work on it.
We have had a wonderful experience with Coder School in Berkeley. My son started with weekly on-line coaching when the pandemic started and has also done some of their on-line camps. He has learned a lot and we've been very happy with it. I highly recommend them.
If you have a child interested in learning coding, I recommend the Coder School in Berkeley. My 11 year old son did their Python Start Up Camp on-line during spring break and loved it. The camp was from 9:30-2:30 with and hour lunch break. It was well run and he learned a lot. We are going to sign up for more camps this summer.
There's a place in North Berkeley opening soon that you might want to check out, called The Coder School. They're having an open house on Saturday, January 28th from 1pm - 3pm. Maybe check them out: thecoderschool.com.
My kid has been doing camps and private lessons at the Coder School for 3 years. He was not eager to try it, but after the free trial lesson he was hooked. Lynna, who runs the program, is thoughtful, warm and responsive. All of the tutors have been great, many of them are CS students at Cal. Their transition from in-person to ZOOM was pretty seamless too. My kid asked to do the ZOOM camp again this summer, so I would call that a win, especially for a parent who has to work from home in Covid times.
My son has been doing classes with the Coder School since they opened several years ago. He loves the classes, and all the coding instructors have been great. They have done a good job following his interests while making sure he's learning some coding. He has used Scratch, Snap, python, and javascript, and I know they have kids doing a variety of other things. He has also enjoyed their summer camps. We highly recommend the Coder School!
My daughter has been doing a weekly Code Coaching session for about six months to get support in creating Roblox games. She has both enjoyed it and made a lot of progress in her understanding of coding. They do a good job of reporting and documenting their work with her.
Our first coach changed his schedule. At that time, they gave us a choice of keeping our time with a new coach or going with a time that our current coach had available. We needed to keep our time and they did a great job in creating a very successful transition for my sensitive and slow-to-warm-up kid.
Both of our coaches have done a great job meeting our daughter where she is at and keeping things fun while advancing her. It's been GREAT for us, particularly with fewer weekend playdates and activities that have been the scene for our last year.
My son attended a week-long beginner coding camp during shelter-in-place. Since the camp was online, I was able to look over at my son's computer screen to see how class was going. The teacher was nice, but he went over all the coding concepts and syntax just once. I thought to myself -- there is no way beginner coding students can truly learn these concepts from being shown just once. After instruction time, the students were given a lot of time to work on their programs. My son ended up using the same 3-4 concepts over and over again in his programs for the entire week. There was no guidance from the teachers during the students' independent work time. The teachers did not encourage or challenge the kids to try new things in their programs. My son ended up learning so little coding during the camp. We don't plan on doing any more camps or classes with Coder School again.
Our daughter attended a week-long online camp last year (she was 8 1/2) and learned how to do scratch programming and we signed her up for another session this year. The camp was well staffed and well organized - they texted reminders in the morning before camp, the teachers (who appeared to be UC Berkeley students) were very pleasant and knowledgeable, and overall we felt like it was money well spent. I specifically liked that the teachers broke the kids out into small groups to do coding and were available to answer questions as the kids applied their new coding skills (they didn't say, "go do this" and then disappear). I can't say that my daughter was inspired after the camp to keep programming on her own but her dad restarted coding with her again a couple weeks ago in preparation for this year's camp and she seemed to remember what she learned.