Craig Foster’s dream as a young person was to have a children’s center to help kids play and learn at the same time. It was an idea that took years to take a definite shape, said the former Army veteran with an undergraduate degree in photography and a master’s in computer information systems. It ultimately found its manifestation in Code Ninjas, a kids’ software coding center, which he opened in April after a long career in information technology. The center is at 1387 E. South Boulder Road, Units E and F in Louisville.
The center aims to teach kids to enjoy interacting with technology, and to help them develop critical-thinking skills and learn about the importance of team work in finding solutions to challenging problems.
“There wasn’t something like this available when my kids were growing up,” said Foster, who has twin girls, age 14. “We don’t get enough of IT in schools.”
He said he found Code Ninjas through research, and was impressed by its a game-based curriculum organized along the lines of martial arts concepts. Children come to a “dojo” to learn from “senseis” and advance from “white to black belt”, he said. As kids “belt up” after completing different coding projects, they get color-coded wristbands (that double as radio-frequency identification tags) to mark their progress to the next level.
But the decision to get a franchise from the Texas-based company took about 18 months, Foster said. “My wife had to be convinced,” he said. But after she saw the concept in action in Houston, she supported his idea, Foster said. She liked kids doing cool stuff.
Foster’s Code Ninjas has 20 students. The center has various programs to fit every budget, he said.
Since he opened for business, Foster has had lot of parents stop by.
“Parents feel technology skills are important as kids move forward. It prepares their kids for the future,” he said.
Code Ninjas mostly caters to kids ages 7 to 14, he said. But he’s not averse to having younger students. Some of them are very smart, he said pointing to a 5-year-old student hunched in front of a screen.
Elizabeth Lynch said she brought her son, Evan Vyssotsky, to Code Ninjas go beyond basic coding taught in schools.
“I could get him to code online. But I was looking for human interaction,” she said.
Lynch proudly talked about her son’s recent project at his school’s science fair. Evan, who will be going to fifth grade at Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield, used LED lights and wires to find out which fruits conduct electricity the best, she said.
“Regardless of a profession kids would go into, they’ll need to have core competencies in coding,” she said. “In a couple of years, you’ll need to know what’s going on inside the box. You’ll have understand the analytics behind it.”
Shannon Thackray knew about her son, Cal’s, interest in technology, and when her husband discovered the coding center during a trip to a nearby grocery store, they decided to enroll Cal and his younger brother, Nolan, at Code Ninjas.
“It’s better for them to learn how to create and build a game rather than play it,” Thackray said.
STEM skills provide longer term career opportunities, said Thackray, vice president of human resources at Rev360,which provides a cloud-based software platform for eye care providers.
“I really like to code,” said Cal Thackray, a sixth grader at Monarch PK-8 School in Louisville. He wants to be a video game developer, he said. Coming to Code Ninjas is fun. “You can do multiple things.”
Liz Maierhofer, an elementary education major at the University of Northern Colorado and a teacher at Code Ninjas, likes the excitement kids show when they are able to move a toy or an image through coding.
She said her focus always is on keeping the kids engaged, particularly when they hit a wall trying to solve a problem. She encourages them to speak first to their buddies before seeking a teacher’s help.
Michael Katona, a Code Ninjas teacher and a computer science major at Rice University, is happy making complex concepts simpler for kids to understand. It’s not easy to keep kids on task, but teaching them is joyful, he said.
