Health & Fitness
The New Literacy: Tech Vet’s Mill Valley Code Club for Kids Is Booming
Douglas Tarr's downtown computer programming club for 1st to 9th graders is bursting at the seams; along with popular programs from fellow local outfit MV Gate and activities at the Middle School, coding for youth is surging in Mill Valley.
On a Thursday afternoon in downtown Mill Valley, a tiny office space was buzzing with the youthful energy of a startup.
Programmers sat at nearly a dozen computers in the 400-square-foot room, and one was working with Arduino, a micro-controller intended to make the application of interactive objects more accessible. In the corner of the room, a Makerbot Replicator, a 3D printer that can create a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model, was humming to life.
But this office tucked into the back of the building that houses the Balboa Café wasn’t a VC-funded startup spawning in the 94941 – the programmers were all of elementary school age, and they were all girls. They were immersed in a variety of games and programs like Code Combat that help them understand things like Javascript programming and develop problem-solving skills.
This is the Mill Valley Code Club, a relatively new project that technology industry veteran Douglas Tarr founded last fall to spread the love and the skills of computer programming to his kids and their friends. The Thursday afternoon session is girls-only, and the Club overall has since ballooned to 100 kids, and along with popular programs from fellow local outfit MV Gateand activities at the Middle School, coding programs for youth are downright surging in Mill Valley.
Click here for more on the Mill Valley Code Club. And click here to check out the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog.
