 | ||
| The Hour of Code engages students of all ages. Pictured, a middle school student. |
For the second consecutive year, Gill St. Bernard's school has participated in the Hour of Code program. The Hour of Code is an international program designed to introduce students to computer coding. The program is really built on dual premises. 1) Most students have no familiarity with computer coding when they graduate high school and 2) Computer coding is a fundamental academic skill that will grow in importance as technology becomes increasingly part of our lives.
Given these two realities, a great many individuals and organizations have backed an initiative that would, at the very least, introduce large numbers of students to computer coding. This introduction comes in the form of a wide variety of coding exercises collectively called the Hour of Code. The exercises, none of which would take more than a hour to complete, can be found at the Hour of Code web site: code.org.
 |
| Upper School students in a Statistics class participated. |
Who's backing Hour of Code? Bill Gates is. So is Ali Partovi. And Susan Wojcicki. And dozens of other important technology people. Organizations, too, like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Dropbox, Facebook, Yahoo! and Khan Academy. In short, support comes from a who's who of technology people and organizations. They all have a stake in promoting coding to a group of people who will become the workforce of tomorrow....today's students.
Some facts about the Hour of Code program. Over 76,000,000 students have participated. They have written over four billion lines of computer code. Participation has been gender-balanced: 51% boys, 49% girls. Participating students come from all over the globe representing about 40 countries. Among these nations, U.S. participation is the largest.
So in participating in the Hour of Code, we're involved in something very big and arguably, very important. But what's actually going on in a Hour of Code classroom? Students are guided to coding activities that are age appropriate. Depending on their age, they may be coding with a simple, object-based code or they may be creating app for phones. But every activity, viewable on the code.org web site, can be completed in a relatively short amount of time. Remember, the goal is not to produce computer coding experts. It is to introduce students to coding and encourage those with an interest to pursue further study.
