The Philosophy Behind Everything We Do.

We can instead produce online content which children access and assimilate at home, bringing knowledge they can interact with in a spontaneous manner during sessions.

Think of it like Khan Academy’s dependency map for mathematics — but for coding. A living, open-source progression where kids track their own journey and understand relationships between skills.

This model, championed by Salman Khan, creates a more dynamic and personalized learning environment than traditional lecture-based instruction.

This is slightly terrifying for those trained in standard pedagogical methods. We instead utilize what Sugata Mitra calls the “grandmother method” — open encouragement with only limited structured lecture.

Large group sizes, organic knowledge transfer, high energy — kids arrive not knowing what they’ll build, and leave having taught someone else how to do it.

Mentors guide from the side, not the front. The room belongs to the kids.

This means large group sizes, healthy turnover, and an intentional impossibility of standardizing programming competence. Content is developed and circulated between dojos, allowing mentors to decide whether to run open computer clubs or focused courseware sessions.

The intent of CoderDojo is to remain non-commercial. Sharing how you built your game is celebrated. Asking people to buy your app is not cool here — that conversation happens outside CoderDojo.

Institutions have rules. Collaboration has culture. We choose culture.