Beyond the Hour of Code

Beyond the Hour of Code

I spent my holidays reflecting on the incredible momentum behind computer science — from hundreds of partners to tens of thousands of educators and schools and millions of students and parents.

Most people who hear about Code.org see the glitz: the Hour of Code, celebrities, and marketing. Indeed, with the help of the US President and other world leaders, Anna & Elsa from Frozen, and every Apple and Microsoft store, the Hour of Code beat even our wildest expectations.

BEYOND THE HOUR OF CODE

But education takes more than an hour. The Hour of Code is just a seed. The bulk of Code.org’s effort goes into follow-up: adding computer science to official curriculum. Here’s my summary of what we achieved in 2014, with your help.

1) Bringing fantastic online courses to classrooms: We’ve developed 100 hours of follow-on curriculum that’s taught in 90,000 schools worldwide. With 4M students enrolled, it receives consistently positive feedback.

2) Partnering with school districts, training teachers: We’ve signed agreements with the largest school districts in the US to train their staff to teach computer science and to add it to the formal curriculum. Code.org’s awesome partners and Affiliates train 1,000 teachers every month! (See below to get involved in your local community)

3) Addressing diversity by starting younger: We all know tech has a workplace diversity problem. Diversity in tech education is even worse. We’re solving it at scale by teaching kids younger and focusing on urban schools. Today only a few thousand female, African American or Hispanic students earn degrees in CS each year. The entire US has only 550,000 female software professionals. By contrast, our intro courses reach 1 million girls and 1 million black and Hispanic students!

4) Changing state policies to support computer science: Since 2013, our coalition of advocacy partners has changed policies in 16 states. We’re proud to say that in 25 states, computer science can finally count for high school graduation. 75% of US students live in these states.

5) Expanding internationally: We’ve translated our lessons into 34 languages and established international partnerships in the UK, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Romania, Albania, and the Middle East.

Looking to 2015, we have a ton of work ahead, but I’ve also never felt more confident in our ability to realize our vision that every student in every school should have the opportunity to study computer science.

This isn’t just something we do on our own. Our work builds on decades of effort, by many organizations and individuals who helped establish, fund, and spread computer science. Our impact is made possible by generous supporters like you.

If you want to help us:

  1. Ask your school to teach CS (example letter)
  2. If you know kids in elementary school, recruit their teacher to offer our courses for grades K-5
  3. Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter
  4. Consider a generous donation.
  5. Help translate our tutorials.

Happy New Year, and thank you as always for your support!

Hadi Partovi and the Code.org team
#moveForward

This is a breath of fresh air, the schools are a long way behind on the pace of the commercial sector and it's vital that they pick up the pace and enable our future workforce to introduce some "state of the art" energy into the commercial sector as soon as the join t he organisation - we need to move on from the "office Junior" mentality and look at the youth of today and tomorrow as the innovators and new blood for the commercial sector to thrive and expand. I will certainly be promoting this ethos and program to my children's schools and to my clients within the education sector.

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Mel Lewis

Disrupting the status quo and assembling something of greater value and beauty from the debris

10 年

To me this is exciting not because it teaches coding, but because the process of coding teaches and exercises logic, structured problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making skills - exactly what you learn in mathematics class, but way more fun. OK, I do love math, but solving a quadratic equation doesn't result in the answer "Hello, World"!

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James Li

Entrepreneur

10 年

Coding is definitely a good skill to have because it help you develop left part of the brain. Personally, I don't think we need more professional programmer because of two reason. 1) Coding will eventually be easier and become drag and drop class, functions for average user like me while talented programmers developing the code. 2) Resources can be better spent on developing creativity and innovation inside people. Again, I do think coding or basic logic is an essential skill to have.

Bob Korzeniowski

Wild Card - draw me for a winning hand | Creative Problem Solver in Many Roles | Manual Software QA | Project Management | Business Analysis | Auditing | Accounting |

10 年

3) Addressing diversity by starting younger: - What's the point if you're going to define diversity incorrectly, by limiting it only to race, ethnicity, and sex? When you do that, you don't address diversity at all. Diversity includes EVERYONE. Those over 40. Those who are US Citizens and green card holders. Those who have disabilities. Everyone should be allowed to come to the table. The article does not address a very big problem. We have PLENTY of people who learn CS. There are just not enough jobs for them. Jobs are outsourced overseas and H1B and L1 visa holders displace US residents in jobs. So the article calling for even MORE people studying CS? How do you expect them to earn a living?

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