Change Agents: The Menlo App Academy wants kids to code
Max Colbert, front, and Matt Dillabough, outside the pool house where the two teach programming classes to their peers.(Photo: Jessica Brandi Lifland, for USA TODAY)
Story Highlights
- Two teens in Silicon Valley went from being curious about coding to convinced everyone should learn it
- They hope to expand from area coding camps to a funded mission that would yield 2,500 coding teachers nationwide
- Code.org says in 2020 two-thirds of U.S. coding jobs will go unfilled by Americans
ATHERTON, Calif. — Matt Dillabough and Max Colbert, the two 14-year-olds behind the Menlo App Academy, have a mission to teach the USA to code. And that could fill a growing need for U.S. employers.
The two entrepreneurs are adamant. This is one economic train the U.S. can't miss.
"Millions of high-paying programming jobs are out there, but they're going to others," says Matt Dillabough, shaking his head in quiet frustration. "If we can spark an interest in this area in kids, those jobs can be filled here."
Max Colbert nods. "Learning to (write computer) code should be like learning to read," he says. "Everyone uses apps on phones and tablets, but how many know how to make them?"
What's remarkable about what these two are saying isn't their commentary, it's their age. Dillabough and Colbert are both 14, and like millions of kids around the nation have just traded the idyll of summer for the rigors of school.
With one big exception. As founders of the Menlo App Academy, Dillabough and Colbert have spent a good deal of time in the past year teaching other kids how to write digital code.
As if replacing a paper route with teaching gigs weren't enough, the duo now hope to land a $250,000 grant from the Packard Foundation. Their goal: teach 25 coding-capable teachers who will in turn teach 2,500 other teachers over two years, so they can fan out and spread the gospel of programming to kids nationwide.
"We want to take this to the next level, and it's been hard," says Dillabough, an affable kid who enjoys tennis and wants to be "a CEO of a company that can change world," as Silicon Valley a dream as they come.
"Max and I had to write up a budget, a mission statement and explain (to the foundation) how we were going to track our achievements," he says. "Right now, we have seven laptops. We need 100 to get things started."
Adds Colbert: "Very few people know how to code, but we think all kids should know how."
That's the stated mission of Code.org, a non-profit founded by Internet entrepreneur Hadi Partovi whose pro-programming video, What Schools Don't Teach — featuring everyone from Bill Gates to NBA star Chris Bosh singing the praises of coding — has been viewed 20 million times.
"It's phenomenal to see kids with such entrepreneurial zeal doing this, which fundamentally shows that coding doesn't belong to some elite priesthood but that anyone can do it," says James Gwertzman, Code.org's chief evangelist. "This should be seen as a basic 21st-century skill."
Gwertzman says the statistics that trouble him include the fact that "100% of Chinese kids K-12 learn coding, but here only 5% do, and many aren't given science credit in school for doing so." He adds that in 2020 there will be 1.4 million programming-related jobs in U.S., but only an estimated 400,000 qualified graduates to fill those positions.
"This is all about the future," he says. "Kids like Matt and Max and the kids they teach are the source of our competitiveness in that future."
LET'S MAKE OUR OWN APPS
Max Colbert, left, and Matt Dillabough started the Menlo App Academy out of a desire to see more young people learn to code, a skill they see as vital to the U.S. economy.(Photo: Jessica Brandi Lifland, for USA TODAY)
The light bulb went off for the two friends in late 2011, shortly after each had gotten ahold of then-new iPhone 4. "We saw all the apps, and just thought, how are they made?" Dillabough says.
Colbert was an aficionado of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and thought it would be fun to make an app that helped new players master the game. Dillabough wanted to create a simple quiz that would help people determine whether they had celiac disease, which he suffered from and required him to avoid gluten in foods.
Their first stop was Colbert's father, Brett, vice president of IT strategy for the Sunnyvale, Calif., network storage company NetApp. The two proved quick studies of the coding art, and by the spring of last year the pair had decided to create a deck of PowerPoint slides that would help them teach their friends what they'd learned.
Starting with the coding language Objective-C, they eventually switched to Lua. Class sizes grew. Wait lists formed. And with fees of $350 for a week-long summer session (now $395), the bank account of the Menlo App Academy — named for the neighboring town where Colbert and most of their friends go to high school — swelled.
"We haven't touched it, except to buy more laptops," says Colbert with a smile.
Both boys quickly found there was a learning curve to the art of teaching.
"At first, we'd just read the slides, but soon it was clear that wasn't keeping people interested," Dillabough says. "You had to memorize them really, so you could convey the information with some style. And there are more than 300 slides."
The duo also realized they needed help. They trained two friends to help with this past summer's classes, Benji Tudor and Ryan Le, both 14. This fall, the quartet will offer one-day app-building classes at the academy's current home — the pool house at Dillabough's sprawling home here.
TIMING CAN'T BE BEAT
No one is more surprised, and impressed, with the traction gained by the Menlo App Academy than Gary Dillabough, an early eBay employee who now makes investments in the green tech space as a managing partner at The Westly Group.
"I'm biased, but I'm so impressed," Dillabough says. "People in Silicon Valley always talk about scaling a venture. Well, these two kids have taken that to heart and are going beyond the simple notion of just teaching their friends. They really want all kids to have this valuable skill."
Brett Colbert shares his fellow father's sentiment, and adds that their sons' timing couldn't be better.
"In the early 2000s, there was this feeling that technology was a robotic thing that you'd just get outsourced, and that did start to happen and the number of computer science majors dropped," he says. "But what we've seen lately is the rise of companies driven by technologists, like Facebook and Google. Those companies can't hire enough networking professionals. And they're just not out there."
But they may be in the Dillabough pool house. On a recent sunny day in this tech nexus, the App Academy teachers met up to go over some slides, teaching techniques and reflect on summer doings.
Max Colbert, left, and Matt Dillabough, jump on the trampoline they use for break time during the programming classes they teach to their peers at Dillabough's family's home.(Photo: Jessica Brandi Lifland, for USA TODAY)
Dillabough played a bunch of tennis, as did Colbert, supplementing that with a Java programming class at Stanford, "though it really isn't as organized as our classes, really." Le spent time running a bunch to get ready for cross-country season, while Tudor swan and took his violin to a music camp.
But what's abundantly clear is how seriously all four take their teaching mission, from the matching black logo shirts they wear to the diligence with which they study their material.
The founding partners said they chose their assistants carefully. For example, Tudor came to their attention while he was attending a class. He not only finished all his assignments first, but would then immediately lend others a hand.
"I guess if there's one main thing I love about teaching at the App Academy it's getting to know people," Tudor says. "I didn't like the presenting part at first, but I got over that."
The presenting part is key, says Dillabough. "If you're not good at that, it can ruin everything," he says. "And Benji's right, you have to be social, too. There's an element of becoming friends with the people you're teaching. The material gets through easier that way."
Colbert adds that he has "learned to be more patient by doing this. And you appreciate it when others juggle things well. Here we have school and sports and then we add this to the mix. It can be a lot. But it's worth it."
The boys say that most of their students want to build rudimentary game apps or quizzes. But making money isn't the mission.
"When I see a kid figure out how to code, their eyes light up," Colbert says. "And you think, wow, maybe you're changing their future?"