Webslam Hackathon to Teach Students Coding and Build Websites for Nonprofits

Webslam is teaching coding skills to students this week to prepare them for civic hackathon being held over the weekend to build websites using the WordPress platform for nonprofit and student projects.

“The Webslam is an intensive one week experience with a capstone that is a civic hackathon,” said Digital Harbor Foundation Executive Director Andrew Coy. “Students or young adults in the Youth Build program are getting instruction all this week from some of our staff in web development: HTML, CSS and the WordPress platform.”

The program was created by the  Digital Harbor Foundation and YouthBuildPhilly. YouthBuild is a charter school in Philadelphia which helps students to build workforce skills in construction, nursing and other types of trade.

“Recently they’ve been looking and saying that the web and other sort of global development is the new digital construction worker,” Coy said. “We’re excited to partner with them to think through and figure that out.”

The Webslam is designed to help students develop these skills both in the classroom and for real projects. During the hackathon portion of the program, groups of students will build a website for either a nonprofit client or a student project with the help of “Tech Coaches” from Philadelphia’s tech community.

“The best way to learn how to do something is to actually have a real world project to do, especially with something like WordPress. ” Coy said. “So I said let’s go find nonprofits that need websites, that don’t have the money to pay for them, and let’s pair them up with students who want to learn how to build websites but don’t know how.”

The hackathon will held at IndyHall on Friday night and Saturday. Learn more about Webslam (and sign up to be a Tech Coach) on their website, http://www.webslam.org/

Image via Digital Harbor Foundation