Concerned about her sons’ growing gadget addiction, this former journalist opened a coding school

Kurie Suditomo and her co-founder Wahyudi met years ago through their shared passion for hiking. They remained friends, although their career paths were very different. Wahyudi went abroad to work as software developer in Germany and the US. Suditomo first worked as arts and culture journalist at Tempo Magazine, then went on to pursue a master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University.

Eventually, both Suditomo and Wahyudi returned to their native Indonesia. Wahyudi started up his own web company, and Suditomo became a communications consultant. Suditomo by this time had two sons, then aged six and nine, in whom she noticed a worrying behaviour. Even though she did not buy them iPads, they were constantly nagging their cousin about borrowing his. Suditomo was concerned to see her sons so fixated on these gadgets without understanding the basic principles of how they work. She started researching for computer schools which could be suitable for children of that age.

But apart from the international programs like Code.org, Suditomo couldn’t find anything tailored to the needs of kids in Indonesia. That’s when she thought of her old friend Wahyudi and asked him if he thought he could tutor her two sons.

Learning from Scratch

Wahyudi explored the tools on Code.org and got interested in Scratch, a free tool designed as an entrance for young children to learn programming principles. Wahyudi and Suditomo decided to get together a group of children for a trial tutoring session, mostly from family and friends.

Since that living room trial class in June 2013, Suditomo’s and Wahyudi’s coding school has developed considerable momentum. The school, which they named “Coding(Indonesia);” now teaches about 300 students.

Some of the students from that first trial class continue to learn with Coding(Indonesia); and Wahyudi has had to continuously expand the curriculum to keep up with the developing skill set of his young students.

A regular course lasts 6 months, and to start out, students learn with Scratch. After that, they progress to web literacy, where they learn HTML, and from there to a module on based on App Inventor, and then GameSalad. Students who are still eager to learn more are then introduced to the programming language python.

“Sometimes the motivation drops after switching to HTML from playing with Scratch, which is very visual and entertaining. But Wahyudi insists on keeping the module, and to teach the kids how to apply the logic they learned with Scratch to the new language,” says Suditomo.

Good tutors are bottleneck to growth

The school has expanded to two main locations in South Jakarta and is currently establishing two additional ones. Since Wahyudi is no longer able to do all the teaching himself, they have started to work with tutors, usually computer science students or teachers.