CodeWorks students worked hard on their summer games

Imonté Anderson spent the summer building a new video game. It’s a take on the familiar game of ping-pong, but he added some color and learned more about Javascript.
The 15-year-old student at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School was one of 60 Baltimore youth from ages 15-20 who recently completed CodeWorks. Computer science education nonprofit Code in the Schools organizes the five-week coding bootcamp. The program provides employment (read: paychecks) for the students as they learned about coding languages. They also got college credit through the University of Baltimore, and got exposure to industry through sessions with Baltimore technologists and entrepreneurs.
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The students are paid through a partnership with the city’s Office of Employment Development YouthWorks summer jobs program. The program is funded Weinberg Foundation and the France-Merrick Foundation.
“The skills you learned this summer are the same ones that companies like AT&T look for in new hires,” La Tara Harris, regional director for AT&T External Affairs in Maryland, told the students after they showed off their work at the final showcase event at the University of Baltimore on July 28. A
The learning doesn’t end with the program. In Anderson’s case, the CodeWorks program also offered a way to continue work that he started during the year. He participated in Code in the Schools’ after-school Prodigy Program in the spring, and plans to do so again in the fall.
“This year during Prodigy, I plan on working on more websites and games that can one day make money for me and my family,” he said.