![]() It won’t be easy - in Chicago, teachers said most schools do not carry the necessary equipment and resources to support computer science classes. In many school districts, Wi-Fi is simply too slow, and access to computers is limited. It’s not enough to get students programming for mere minutes - schools need to build a coding curriculum. Indeed, it’s valuable to recognize the limitations of short-term campaigns. It’s important to question numbers like these, as it’s not easy to count up lines of code from disparate sources. As Slashdot points out, not every student finished the hour-long computer tutorial. The campaign is not without its skeptics. 15 million students learned 1 hour of code.More girls participated in computer science classes than in the past 70 years.The brothers shared an infographic with VentureBeat this morning to demonstrate the campaign’s reach. “I don’t know of any new product or service in history that has opened its doors to that kind of traffic,” he said. “The night before it started, we had 4.5 million students registered and we were up at 2am wondering whether our servers could handle the load,” said Ali. “And we held up, handling 3 million kids on day one and 15 million by the end of the week.” President Barack Obama even issued a video statement to encourage students to participate. So they timed Hour of Code with this week, and rallied support from friends in high places, including celebrities and politicians in the highest echelons of government. ![]() The Partovi brothers realized that Computer Science Education Week was coming up in December, but no one had heard of it. “But that privilege is not available to most Americans.” “Coding is a privilege,” said Ali at DevBeat. founders Ali and Hadi Partovi spoke at our DevBeat conference in October, and described how computer science education is declining. ![]() Educators may be hesitant to add something new, especially if there are not many proven models to follow.A campaign, dubbed Hour of Code, kicked off last Monday with support from computer education nonprofit, and school districts across the country. Beyond that, it is difficult to to get buy-in from all stakeholders. This makes it difficult for the teachers to learn the subject matter and most administrators aren’t quite sure how they can support their teachers. A major hurdle is that most elementary educators have never had any kind of exposure to computer science. I’ve experienced this first hand by helping districts implement computer science courses for all elementary students, and it has always been challenging. What if we only taught one hour of math each year? Would we be excited or would we strive for more? In addition to celebrating Hour of Code in our schools, I hope that in 2017, we will celebrate our plans to expand computer science offerings to all our young students.ĭon’t get me wrong, going beyond the Hour of Code will be no easy task. This leads to an unintended consequence of the Hour of Code: complacency. They have to frame their thoughts as a response to some of the finest college application essay prompts, inspired by the very same ones that high school seniors are feverishly working on now! In our fourth year-end personal statement roundup, we’ve again asked thought leaders to share their outlooks on education, but with a twist. ‘Tis the season of giving, eating and reflecting, a time to look back on 2016 and to make bold predictions about what next year may hold. It was never meant to be a solution-rather, it was intended to act as a catalyst-but still many educators fail to push for more computer science education in elementary schools. For instance, The Hour of Code is just that-one hour. My main concern is over the messages we send about the quantity and quality of computer science education that should be provided. I hope 2017 is the year that more of us start to think seriously about going beyond an Hour of Code, particularly at the elementary grade levels. But even with these gains, there is more work to do. These numbers show progress, and I’m thrilled to see this 21st century subject in the spotlight. And according to Google and Gallup’s 2016 Trends in the State of Computer Science Report, 6 percent more schools offered at least one computer science class, compared to last year. Let’s start with a few statistics: Over the past few years, more than 300 million people worldwide participated in the Hour of Code. With 2016 Computer Science Education Week in the rear-view mirror, I’d like to reflect on my hopes and dreams for 2017.
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