Alberta students gather at the Picture Butte High School for Hackathon

Feb 25, 2020 | 5:02 PM

PICTRE BUTTE, AB. — 125 students from Alberta were at Picture Butte High School on Tuesday (Feb 25) for the Callysto Hackathon, which taught them a variety of coding skills.

Callysto is a free, interactive, learning and skills development program for Grades 5-12 students in Canada. The program is part of a two-year pilot project by Cybera and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. They received funding from the federal government’s CanCode program to build and employ new technologies that promote digital literacy, and help Canada’s youth develop the foundational skills required to become the future drivers of innovation.

The Hackathon events span across Canada and the World but Callysto Canada hosted this particular Hackathon to teach certain computer science tasks.

Callysto workers guided the students through a competition, to see who could win prizes for having the best programing skills or coding the fastest.

The different skills are going to be helpful for the next generation when dealing with jobs, marketing, managing your money, and many other useful skills.

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Connor Gunn was at the event and captured some of the action.

Callysto holds many different Hackathons across Canada and they look to grow coding and computer sciences among Canada’s young students.

“There is definitely a demand for data-science skills,” says Callysto ambassador David Hay, an elementary teacher with Elk Island Public Schools who is currently on sabbatical to promote and develop Callysto. “Organizations want people who can make sense of, and communicate, data. We’re hoping to teach students these skills at the hackathon, where they will be using open data from local and national sources to make the learning relevant, and prepare them for real-life challenges.”

by Connor Gunn