Code.org is using the now deceased app Flappy Bird to teach kids how to code their own games.
"For us, the future is about bringing it to a million classrooms, and providing tutorials for every grade from kindergarten until senior year," Code.org founder Hadi Partovi told GamesBeat.
According Gamesbeat, the nonprofit tech organization aims to give children a better understanding of computer science, instilling curiosity in the next generation of developers.
"We use Flappy Bird to draw kids in because it immediately suggests that this is fun and unlike anything else they learn in school," Partovi told GamesBeat. "Once they try it, they learn that writing code is fun because you get to solve puzzles and make things, which is a lot more fun than memorizing the Pythagorean theorem or the capital of Zimbabwe."
The coding program for Flappy Bird uses simple drag and drop options of what you can "tell" your computer to do. Behind the colored blocks are actual code sequences and the drag and drop motion gives kids an idea of how code works. According to Gamesbeat, it will take you less than 10 minutes to create your own Flappy Bird game. Code.org recently announced the organization has helped students write "1 billion lines of code."
"Without sounding too arrogant, I'd say this milestone represents that we've managed to change the course of education," Partovi told Gamesbeat. "The students have voted with their fingers that they want to learn to code. We've had 27 million students try this in 3 months, and they've written 20 times as many lines of code as in all of Windows."
You can check out more of Code.org's mission for students on their official website here.
"Flappy Bird is a simple game, and using the basics of computer science, any student can create their own version with endless possibilities," Code.org said on their official Tumblr.
