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Hour of Code Highlights the Increasing Importance of Coding in Schools

A second annual campaign seeks to unveil the mystery of coding in schools around the world.

The Hour of Code campaign is gaining traction in schools as millions of students learn the building blocks of coding.

In its second year, the Hour of Code initiative seeks to unveil the mystery that surrounds coding and show students that anyone can learn the basics of coding, said Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org. Last year, 15 million students spent an hour learning how to code during Computer Science Education Week with online tutorials, games and offline activities. This year, they're shooting for 20 million to 30 million, and they've already seen about 1 million every hour.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama got into the action as he wrote code alongside students near the White House on Monday, Dec. 8. And several other heads of state in the United Kingdom and Ireland also participated in Hour of Code.

"The reason that's important is it gets across the message that this is something that everybody should be doing," Partovi said. He added that policymakers should have as much knowledge about technology as they do about other things because they regulate the Internet, protect us from cyberwarfare and pass laws about copyright.

No matter what walk of life, everyone should have a basic understanding of how the technology they use every day works and how to create something with it. Just as students learn about the principles of biology and chemistry in high school, they should also learn the principals of computer science, Partovi said. In middle school and elementary school, computer science can be integrated into the subjects they already learn. 

"Computer science is as foundational as biology," Partovi said.

He stressed that coding education is not about filling the job pipeline, but rather providing a general knowledge base for students to work from. For example, high school students are required to take biology, yet most of them don't go on to become biologists. Instead, they now understand how living organisms work. It's the same with computer science.

As technology continues to play a large role in our lives, coding and digital literacy will become woven into the fabric of schools, said Andrew P. Marcinek, director of technology for Grafton Public Schools in Massachusetts. In the global economy we live in, it's important to train citizens well in school so they graduate with a toolbox filled with a variety of skillsets, including foreign languages, coding and other digital literacies.

And with toddlers already using their parents' smartphones, elementary school is not too early to start teaching coding. 

"As one medium gets pushed or provoked, it creates a whole new wave of jobs and interest, and I think that's where we are with technology," Marcinek said.

The iPhone and iPad have been agents of change to make computer science cool, not to mention the celebrity and athlete endorsements of coding, he said. And now that there are more resources and a push to bring coding into elementary and middle schools, districts are starting to build foundational computer science skills in young students rather than waiting until high school.

This year, Code.org introduced a blended learning curriculum called Code Studio for K-5 students. And ScratchJr — an introductory programming language — also came out for students ages 5 to 7 thanks to a collaboration of the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab and the Playful Invention Company. 

In Massachusetts, high school students in Groton-Dunstable Regional School District helped teach elementary school students during the Hour of Code last year and this year, said Marcinek, who worked at that school district last year and learned alongside the elementary students. After seeing how well the Hour of Code went at this level, the school district decided to introduce a new coding concept to elementary school students each week as a part of the curriculum.  

At Grafton Public Schools where he now works, high school students on the student tech force made themselves available to teach their peers about coding and show them some of the different applications they could use to create things. While this took place during students' free time or study hall, the district is already looking at doing another Hour of Code in the spring so that high school students can serve as coding ambassadors to elementary and middle school students. 

This story was originally published by the Center for Digital Education.