Spearheaded by nonprofit www.hourofcode.com, during the past year, Hour of Code has reached tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. As of last count, there were 77,221 Hour of Code events around the world.
Anybody can host an Hour of Code anytime, but a grassroots campaign goal is for tens of millions of students to try an Hour of Code event during this week – December 8-14, 2014— the first anniversary of the event during Computer Science Education Week.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg supports the program, recently donating $1 million on Indiegogo to Code.org’s Hour of Code crowd-funding campaign. And this Friday, December 12, Apple retail stores across the planet will host one-hour coding workshops, for free, to anyone who wants to sign up and participate. These will offer an introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and help inspire students to learn the basics of it. Apple will also host developers and engineers for special events and discussions in many cities around the world.
Code Week’s effort encourages minorities (this includes women) to open up the possibilities for both technology and for people. It’s truly a win-win.
But somehow in our tech-obsessed world, there remains a real stigma about coding – a genuine perception that it is difficult or challenging or too, well, nerdish. The stereotypes regarding coding are tiresome and so last millennium! This is in many ways limiting and unfortunate as coding is an incredible skill for people of all races, creeds, and genders.
Increasingly, technology affects every aspect of our lives, from the cars we drive to food we eat to the clothes we wear and the medicine we take. You can be a consumer, or a creator (or, ideally, both). Everyone should have the chance to have a say in creating the technology of the future.
Making education available matters, if we’re truly serious about creating equal opportunity on our increasingly connected planet. If you have a son, daughter, or grandkids, I encourage you to get them excited about and take part in Hour of Code.
Lets broaden the tech tent by inviting everyone in, and celebrate the Hour of Code. I’d love to go along with them and stretch my mental synapses a bit!
That’s truly impressive. One-hour tutorials are available in over 30 languages. As the organization says, “”No experience needed. Ages 4 to 104.”