Calliope
Calliope gGmbH is a non-profit organization founded in 2016. Since then, we have been committed to making digital education practical, understandable, and accessible to everyone. The Calliope mini has been in use since 2017 and is now used at more than 7,000 schools – from primary school to upper secondary level and across all types of schools. As one of the most widely used German developers in the field of open hardware, open source, and open education, Calliope gGmbH combines technical development with educational experience. Our goal is to give children and young people simple, creative, and age-appropriate access to programming, computer science, and digital making.
The work of Calliope gGmbH is based on several pillars:
Hardware - We develop hardware for the education sector, produced in Thuringia.
Software - With the editors we provide, we enable both block-based and text-based programming – suitable for beginners as well as for more advanced projects.
Teaching materials - We also provide curriculum-based teaching materials as Open Educational Resources, which teachers can use freely and adapt to their lessons.
Training Courses - In addition, we offer Training Courses for teachers for getting started, deepening knowledge, and exchanging ideas within the network.
Personal support - The Calliope team is available and helps with technical questions, lesson preparation, and getting started with the Calliope mini. In this way, we aim to reliably support teachers, schools, and learners and to establish digital education in the classroom in a lively and sustainable way.(Info@calliope.cc)
Our Mission
In an increasingly automated world, we want to help prepare young people not only to use digital systems, but also to empower them to actively, creatively, and confidently help shape this world.
This requires media education that demystifies technology: children should learn that computers do not control them, but that digital systems are designed, programmed, and controlled by people. Anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the world must also understand that computers do what people tell them to do. In this way, programming becomes a pathway to self-efficacy, creativity, and social participation.
The goal is to make children digitally literate citizens who can use technology reflectively, question it, and shape it themselves. Media education in the sense of education in the digital world encompasses key areas of competence: operating and applying, informing and researching, communicating and collaborating, producing and presenting, analyzing and reflecting, as well as problem-solving and modeling.
And Education Policy?
Compulsory computer science as a subject in lower secondary education is becoming increasingly important nationwide: according to the Informatik-Monitor 2025/26, ten federal states have now introduced computer science as a compulsory subject at all secondary schools; other states are planning implementation in the coming years.
This development is professionally supported by the computer science education standards for lower secondary education published by the Gesellschaft für Informatik. The KMK also emphasizes the growing importance of digital and computer science education for schools and society.