Are you fed up with coding platforms that appear… then disappear just as you’ve got your scheme of work sorted?

This week At the Chalk Face, we’re joined by two brilliant guests who might just restore your faith in programming platforms.

We sit down with Matthias De Witte (Co-founder & CEO) and Peter Dawyndt (Co-founder & CTO) from Dodona Learning Technologies to talk about a seriously impressive coding platform that’s been quietly supporting tens of thousands of students for nearly a decade.

Dodona wasn’t built by a venture capital team chasing profit – it was built by educators, for educators.

Designed originally to support university teaching, it’s now used by schools and universities across Belgium and beyond, offering:
Automated, meaningful feedback (not just pass/fail)
Powerful visual debugging – including the ability to step backwards through code
A fully web-based platform (no installs, no tech headaches)
Tools that genuinely support independence without removing the teacher from the loop
A thoughtful, research-led approach to AI (no “AI writes the code for you” nonsense here)

We also talk candidly about:
Why teachers are frustrated with platforms coming and going
The real challenges of teaching programming at scale
Feedback, debugging, plagiarism, and learning analytics
How Dodona keeps pedagogy front and centre
Why Time to Code now lives inside Dodona

If you’re a computer science teacher looking for a robust, proven, education-first coding platform – this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

👉 Find out more about Dodona here: https://dodona.be/

👉 And yes… they’ll be at the Craig’n’Dave Festival of Computing this July!

Let us know your thoughts in the comments – and whether Dodona could work in your classroom.

#TeamCompSci #CraignDave #ComputerScienceTeachers #CodingEducation #ProgrammingInSchools #EdTech #TimeToCode