Duisburg has just over half a million residents, and on this page they could all be in one family: a primary pupil who wants to make a game, a teenager curious about how AI actually learns, and a parent who would like a spreadsheet to sort itself. We teach all three, live and in English. Below you will find how each age starts, what NRW schools already cover, the AI tools each age may legally use, and a project on the city's own swimming pool figures in which the first answer is wrong for a reason every learner should see once.
Live online since 2020 · 10,000+ students worldwide · children, teenagers and adults, each with their own mentor
The short answer
Modern Age Coders runs coding and AI classes for Duisburg learners of every age, live online and in English: children from 6 build Scratch games and move on to Python, teenagers learn Python, data and how machine learning works, and adults learn scripts and AI tools that save real hours. A regular mentor matches each learner's pace and accent, in a group of 15 to 20 or on their own, after school, after work or at weekends.
One starting course per age
Where a Duisburg child, teenager or adult begins
Three courses, one for each stage of life. The mentor confirms the right one in the free first class, after seeing what the learner can already do.
Anyone from about six upwards. What changes with age is not the seriousness of the work but the tools, the pace and what "AI" sensibly means.
How each age starts with us, and what AI means at that age (our plan)
Age
First tool
First real project
What AI means here
6 to 8
Scratch blocks
A story or a chase game
Sorting pictures by rules, then talking about how a machine might learn the rule
9 to 12
Scratch, then typed Python
A quiz or a turtle drawing
Training a tiny classifier on examples the child made up
13 to 18
Python
Reading a real data file
Building and testing a model against a simple guess
Adults
Python and spreadsheets
Automating a weekly chore
Using AI assistants and checking every answer they give
Our own course plan. The age bands follow the providers' terms for AI tools, set out further down this page.
For a child of 6 to 12
The youngest learners never sit through a lecture. They drag blocks, press the green flag and see a cat move, and within a few weeks they are making decisions a programmer makes: what should happen first, what repeats, what changes when a key is pressed.
Around nine or ten most children are ready to type. That switch to Python is where a regular mentor matters most, because typing errors frustrate quickly and a good mentor knows when to help and when to wait.
For a teenager or an adult
Teenagers start where school Informatik often stops: real files, real errors and programs longer than one screen. The AI course then goes inside the models they already use, with numbers they can check.
Adults usually come with a specific job in mind, a report, a list of addresses, a folder of invoices. We start with that job, because a script that saves an hour every Monday keeps anyone motivated through the harder parts.
Duisburg had 502,270 residents on 31 December 2024, according to the Destatis municipal register, which makes it one of the largest cities in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Learners also join us from the towns around it: Oberhausen with 213,646 residents, Mülheim an der Ruhr with 173,050, Krefeld with 231,406 and Moers with 101,503, on the same register. Because every class is online, the city on the address makes no difference to the lesson; it only decides which school holidays apply.
Families with more than one learner often ask whether siblings can share a class. They can share a mentor, but not a group: a seven year old and a fourteen year old learn at different speeds and should be with learners of their own age. Parents in a one-to-one plan can also add a second learner on a separate schedule.
A Duisburg data project
Which Duisburg swimming pool had the most visitors in 2024?
Stadt Duisburg publishes the number of visitors to its public pools every year, free to reuse under a CC BY 3.0 DE licence. The file is small enough to read by eye and still hides a trap that catches adults as often as children.
The file
The dataset is called Besucherzahlen der Schwimmbäder in Duisburg. We downloaded its CSV version, Besucherstatistik_5.csv, on 3 November 2026: 601 bytes, separated by semicolons, with one column per year from 2015 to 2024.
It lists six pools by name: Allwetterbad Walsum, Rhein-Ruhr-Bad, HB Toeppersee, HB Neudorf, FB Homberg and the Schwimmstadion. Then comes a seventh line whose name cell is empty.
The question
Which pool had the most visitors in 2024? A teenager can answer it in a dozen lines of Python, and the first attempt below does exactly what most people would write.
Run it before you read the explanation, and decide whether you believe the answer.
Attempt 1: read every row and take the largestPython
import csv
with open("Besucherstatistik_5.csv", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
rows = list(csv.reader(f, delimiter=";"))
years = rows[0][1:]
visits = {}
for row in rows[1:]:
visits[row[0]] = [int(x) for x in row[1:]]
last = years.index("2024")
busiest = max(visits, key=lambda name: visits[name][last])
print("Rows read:", len(visits))
print("Busiest pool in 2024:", repr(busiest), visits[busiest][last])
It prints Rows read: 7 and Busiest pool in 2024: '' 478195.
The winner has no name. That seventh line is not a pool at all: it is the city's own total for each year, added at the bottom of the file the way people add a sum row in a spreadsheet. Python cannot know that, so it treats the total as one more pool, and the total of course beats every single pool. Nothing crashed and nothing looked broken; the answer was simply nonsense with a number attached.
Attempt 2: set the totals row aside, then use it as a checkPython
import csv
with open("Besucherstatistik_5.csv", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
rows = list(csv.reader(f, delimiter=";"))
years = rows[0][1:]
pools = {}
total_row = None
for row in rows[1:]:
numbers = [int(x) for x in row[1:]]
if row[0].strip() == "":
total_row = numbers # the city's own sum, not a pool
else:
pools[row[0]] = numbers
i = years.index("2024")
busiest = max(pools, key=lambda name: pools[name][i])
print("Pools:", len(pools))
print("Busiest pool in 2024:", busiest, pools[busiest][i])
ours = [sum(p[k] for p in pools.values()) for k in range(len(years))]
print("Our sums match the total row:", ours == total_row)
It prints Pools: 6, Busiest pool in 2024: Rhein-Ruhr-Bad 132229 and Our sums match the total row: True.
The second attempt does two things. It keeps the totals row out of the ranking, and then it turns the trap into a tool: it adds up the six pools for every year itself and compares the result with the city's own totals. They match for all ten years, which tells us no pool is missing and no number was mistyped. The Rhein-Ruhr-Bad had the most visitors in 2024, 132,229 of them.
Attempt 3: how far had each pool come back by 2024?Python
before = years.index("2019")
low = years.index("2021")
now = years.index("2024")
ranked = sorted(pools.items(), key=lambda kv: kv[1][now] / kv[1][before], reverse=True)
for name, v in ranked:
print(f"{name:20} 2021: {100 * v[low] / v[before]:5.1f}% 2024: {100 * v[now] / v[before]:5.1f}% of 2019")
Run after Attempt 2. It prints six lines, from Schwimmstadion 2021: 23.9% 2024: 107.6% of 2019 down to Rhein-Ruhr-Bad 2021: 18.6% 2024: 69.6% of 2019.
Visitors in 2021 and 2024 as a share of 2019, per pool (our calculation)
Pool
2021
2024
Schwimmstadion
23.9%
107.6%
HB Toeppersee
38.7%
101.6%
HB Neudorf
29.4%
95.5%
FB Homberg
39.5%
82.6%
Allwetterbad Walsum
23.8%
69.8%
Rhein-Ruhr-Bad
18.6%
69.6%
Data: Stadt Duisburg, Besucherzahlen der Schwimmbäder in Duisburg, opendata-duisburg.de via Open.NRW, licence Creative Commons Namensnennung 3.0 Deutschland (CC BY 3.0 DE), file Besucherstatistik_5.csv downloaded 3 November 2026. The city's totals row reads 584,860 visitors for 2019, 153,953 for 2021 and 478,195 for 2024. The percentages and the ranking are our own.
The table makes a second point that a ranking hides. The Rhein-Ruhr-Bad is the busiest pool in 2024 and also the one furthest below its own 2019 level, while the smaller Schwimmstadion is already above it. "Most visitors" and "recovered most" are different questions with different winners. The file does not say why visitor numbers fell in 2020 and 2021 or why some pools came back faster, so we do not guess; a good analyst writes down what the data cannot tell them.
Ages 6 to 8, on paper. Write the six pool numbers for 2024 on cards, then add a seventh card with their sum. Ask someone to pick the "biggest pool" from the pile.
Ages 9 to 12, Scratch or Python. Put the 2024 numbers in a list, find the largest, then add the total to the list and watch it win.
Ages 13 to 18. Run all three attempts, then draw one line per pool from 2015 to 2024 and describe each shape in one sentence.
Adults. Open the XLSX version the city also publishes and find the same totals row. Write a rule you would add to any import script at work.
NRW schools
What do schools in Duisburg teach about computing?
Duisburg is in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and NRW is one of the Länder where Informatik is compulsory for a short stretch. The rules below are taken from the GI monitor of the subject and from the NRW school ministry.
Computing in an NRW school career
Stage
What NRW sets
Grundschule, grades 1 to 4
No separate Informatik subject
Grades 5 and 6
Informatik is a compulsory subject at all general school types
Grades 7 to 10
Informatik depends on the school and on the pupil's choices
End of grade 10
Central ZP10 exams in German, maths and English
Qualifikationsphase
Informatik as a Grundkurs of three hours or a Leistungskurs of five, where offered
Written Abitur
Informatik tasks set centrally; no computer is used in the written exam
Read on 2 November 2026: the NRW entry of the GI Informatik-Monitor 2026/27, plus the Schulministerium NRW pages on the Zentrale Prüfungen 10 and on the 2027 Zentralabitur dates.
What that gives a Duisburg pupil
Two years of compulsory Informatik in grades 5 and 6 is more than many Länder offer. A Duisburg child meets the basic ideas, algorithms, data and how a computer follows instructions, around the age of ten or eleven.
After grade 6 the subject becomes a choice. Nationally, the Informatik-Monitor estimates that about 15 percent of pupils take it in the Qualifikationsphase, so most teenagers leave school with those two early years and little more.
Where our classes fit
We teach alongside school, not instead of it; the school course is the one that counts for grades. For children before grade 5, our classes are a head start. For grades 7 to 10, they keep programming going when the timetable no longer does.
For an Oberstufe pupil with an Informatik Grundkurs or Leistungskurs, the written Abitur on paper rewards someone who can trace code by hand, which is a skill we practise on purpose. The NRW written Abitur main exams in 2027 run from 13 April to 5 May 2027.
AI and age
Which AI tools can each age use in a Duisburg class?
Every AI provider sets a minimum age in its own terms. Our classes follow those terms exactly, which shapes how AI is taught at each age.
Children under 13
No chatbot accounts at all. Children learn what AI is by building tiny versions of it themselves: a program that sorts animals by rules, a game that gets better from examples. Our AI literacy course is built this way.
Teenagers 13 to 17
OpenAI's terms allow ChatGPT from 13 with a parent's or guardian's permission. Our teen machine-learning course needs no chatbot: models are written in plain Python, so the teenager sees every number the model learns.
Adults 18 and over
Adults can use the full range, including tools such as Claude that are for adults only. We teach them to give an assistant a clear task, then to check its work the way Attempt 2 above checks the city's totals.
Minimum ages from the providers' terms, quoted with links in our AI tools age guide. Terms change; that page records when each was last read.
Our rule for every age is the one the pool project teaches: an answer is not finished when it appears on the screen, whether a person, a script or an AI assistant produced it. The habit of asking "what would make this wrong?" is worth more than any single tool, and it is the difference between a learner who thinks and one who copies.
Teenagers who want to go further can enter the Bundeswettbewerb Künstliche Intelligenz, which requires machine-learning methods and accepts projects in German or in English. Its 2026 final takes place in Tübingen on 13 November 2026. Jugend forscht, which covers informatics and maths among other fields, asks for online registration by 30 November each year. We are not connected with either competition.
Times and holidays
When do classes run in Duisburg time, and do they stop in the holidays?
Children usually come after school or on weekend mornings, adults after work. The mentors are in India, where the clock is ahead of Duisburg all year.
Example Duisburg class times and the mentor's time in India
Class time in Duisburg
Mentor's clock this winter
Mentor's clock after the spring change
15:45, after school
20:15
19:15
18:15, after work
22:45
21:45
Saturday 11:15
15:45
14:45
Sunday 10:15
14:45
13:45
Clocks: Duisburg runs on MEZ (UTC+1) from late October and on MESZ (UTC+2) from late March, as the Einheitenzeitgesetz lays down. The 2026 change back happened on 25 October, and the 2027 change forward falls on Sunday 28 March. India never changes its clocks (UTC+5:30), so the gap is four and a half hours this winter and three and a half from the end of March. The rows are illustrations, not fixed batch times.
NRW school holidays 2026/27
Holiday
Dates
Herbstferien
17 October to 31 October 2026
Christmas
23 December 2026 to 6 January 2027
Osterferien
22 March to 3 April 2027
Pfingsten
18 May 2027
Sommerferien
19 July to 31 August 2027
Source: Kultusministerkonferenz, Ferien im Schuljahr 2026/2027, Nordrhein-Westfalen row, Stand 9 October 2025. First and last holiday day shown.
Classes do not stop for the NRW holidays, because the mentor's calendar is not tied to them. Many families keep going through the Herbstferien and use the long summer break for a short project course, while others pause for a trip and start again when school does. Just tell your mentor in advance.
Progress
What progress looks like at each age
Our own milestones, used to place learners and to report to them, or to their parents, every month.
Milestones by age group (ours)
Milestone
Children
Teenagers and adults
First month
A working Scratch game with a score
A script that reads a file and prints a count
Third month
Loops, conditions and lists without help
Cleaned data and a chart that answers a question
Sixth month
First typed Python programs
A model or an automation tested against a simple baseline
After a year
A project shown to the family
A project they can explain to a stranger, limits included
Parents of younger learners
A finished game matters less than a child who can tell you why it broke and how they mended it.
Ask your child to show you one bug a week. It turns screen time into a conversation.
Teenagers and adults
Before you trust a ranking, look for the row that is not like the others.
If your sum matches the publisher's, say so. If it does not, find out why before you go on.
Nine more courses
More coding and AI courses for Duisburg learners
Grouped by age. Each is live, in English, with the same mentor every week, either in a group or solo.
I
Children
Ages 6 to 12
CAI / KIDS / 01
Scratch for kids
Three to four months from a blank stage to finished games.
Weekdays or weekends, flexible: choose your batch, or for a very personalised plan choose 1-on-1 at your convenience, weekend mornings or weekdays.
After school
Late afternoon in Duisburg, for children and teenagers.
After work
Early evening slots for adults, by agreement.
Weekends
Saturday and Sunday mornings, popular with younger children.
Live, never recorded
Every lesson has a mentor on the call.
One mentor
A familiar face on screen, week after week.
English, at their pace
Clear speech, repeated in simpler words when needed.
Grouped by age
Children, teenagers and adults never share a group.
Monthly reports
A short note on progress, sticking points and the next goal.
Two formats
A shared class of 15 to 20, or private lessons.
Student work
Projects our students have built
Learners of every age build real things with us. A few projects from our students worldwide are below, and there is a longer list on our student labs page.
AI and ML
NutriLife
An AI nutrition coach that reads what you eat and works you toward a target.
A weather forecasting site with live conditions for any location.
by Krish
Fees
Fees for Duisburg learners
Eight live classes a month for one fee, whatever the learner's age. You see that fee in euro, derived from the European Central Bank reference rate; the charge itself goes through in US dollars, and your bank turns it back into euro at its own rate, so expect a few cents of difference.
Google reviews from students and parents, shown as they were written.
★★★★★
"The one step solution for my son. Modern Age Coders make learning coding so simple that kids love it. The teachers explain complex concepts clearly with practical exercises and interactive content."
Ria Mukherjee
Parent
★★★★★
"Modern Age Coders has been a game-changer for me. I struggled to grasp IT concepts and coding before joining, but their classes transformed everything. I can now confidently write complex programs with ease."
Samriddha Mondal
Student
★★★★★
"One of the most wonderful education centres out there. Education is not limited to school syllabus but focuses on skill development."
Vansh Agarwal
Student
★★★★★
"My child Dhairya is really enjoying the Modern Age Coders classes. This is his first online class and he eagerly looks forward to it. I can already see his improvement, and the teachers are very cooperative."
Sonam Oswal
Parent of Dhairya
★★★★★
"Modern Age Coders have wonderful teachers who teach in a clear, easy and practical way. The teacher boosts students' confidence and inspires them to learn without hesitation."
Sonu Goyal
Parent
★★★★★
"I highly recommend this computer coding class! The teachers are incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about coding."
Ritu Kedia
Parent
Duisburg learners ask
Coding and AI classes in Duisburg: questions and answers
Are the classes in German?
No. All classes are live and taught in English only. Mentors speak clearly, adjust to the learner's pace and accent, and rephrase when something is not understood. Code itself reads the same in any language.
What is the youngest age you teach in Duisburg?
Six. Children of six to eight start with Scratch blocks, so they do not need to type or read long instructions. From about nine they can move to typed Python.
Can adults with no experience join?
Yes. The adult courses start from zero and are built around a task the learner actually has, such as a weekly report or a list that needs sorting. Adults are never placed in a group with children or teenagers.
Do schools in Duisburg teach Informatik?
Yes, for two years. NRW makes Informatik compulsory in grades 5 and 6 at all general school types. After that it depends on the school and the pupil's choices, and in the Oberstufe it can be a three-hour Grundkurs or a five-hour Leistungskurs.
Which AI tools will my child use?
Under 13, none that need an account: children build small AI ideas themselves in Scratch or Python. From 13, OpenAI's terms allow ChatGPT with a parent's permission, but our teen course writes models in plain Python and does not need it. Adult-only tools are used only in adult courses.
When are classes in Duisburg time?
Weekdays or weekends, flexible: choose your batch, or for a very personalised plan choose 1-on-1 at your convenience, weekend mornings or weekdays. Children usually take late afternoon or weekend morning slots; adults often prefer the early evening.
Do classes pause during the NRW holidays?
Only if you want them to. The mentors are not on the NRW school calendar, so classes can continue through the Herbstferien, Christmas and summer. Families who travel simply tell the mentor and pick up again afterwards.
Where are the mentors?
In India. Lessons are live over video, and because India is 4 hours 30 minutes ahead of Duisburg in winter, a 15:45 class in Duisburg is 20:15 for the mentor.
How much does it cost, and in which currency?
You pay monthly. On this page the fee appears in euro, worked out from the European Central Bank reference rate, while the card is charged in US dollars; the conversion is done by your own bank, which is why a statement rarely shows the euro figure to the cent. Trying a first class costs nothing.
Can two people in one family learn at the same time?
Yes, in separate groups or separate one-to-one plans, each matched to their age and level. Siblings of very different ages learn better apart, even when they share the same mentor.
Tell us who wants to learn and how old they are. The mentor sets a short task for that age, watches how the learner tackles it and how easily they follow spoken English, then recommends a course.
Curious about the method first? how we teach explains our lessons and all courses lists every syllabus.
Live online classes in English only, with mentors in India. The quickest way to reach us is WhatsApp, in English.
Want a class sooner? Book a priority demo
A priority demo is a full class of about 45 to 60 minutes. After the class the mentor sends a written skill report and a personal learning roadmap on WhatsApp. If you enrol, the demo fee is adjusted against your first month's fee. Share your demo Order ID with us on WhatsApp and we take it off.
