The Hour of Code is Coming!

Last year my computer science students participated in the Hour of Code. This year, I am taking the plunge and organizing my entire school.

I won't bore you with statistics--how many schools don't have programming courses, the percentage of boys to girls in computer science classes... I just think that coding is an amazing activity for all students. It promotes thinking, reasoning, problem solving. It can be a hobby or a career! The shortage of progammers in he US is already significant. In the future, this shortage is expected to grow exponentially.

For the Code activities in my school I'll be using iPad apps like Kodable, Daisy the Dino and Scratch, Jr, with the younger kids. The free web tools Scratch and CodeAvengers will be used with the older students. All of these are FREE and excellent apps for learning coding strategies.

If you are interested in participating with your class or school, more info can be found at Hour of Code or Code.org. The work has been done for you and it is really easy to implement. Even if you don't have any computers or tablets, there are unplugged activities that students can do at http://csedweek.org/learn. All students should be introduced to programming.