This week, students all around the world will be participating in (the) Hour of Code! It falls during Computer Science Education Week(CSEd) which aims to get students interested and excited about computer education. Four years after the launch of CSEd Week was established, a website was created that would help them facilitate this need and idea.
Code.org was established by Hadi Partovi who came up with the idea while thinking about his contributions to society and what impact he could leave behind. The website allows students to:
Learn coding at any age (even pre-readers!)
Explore and be creative while teaching them essential programming principles.
Play educational games with their favorite characters from movies, games, and apps
Participate in tutorials
One major impact Code.org has had is the ability to reach students who otherwise, may not have the means or opportunity to learn how to code. Code.org says, "The majority of our students are young women or students from marginalized racial and ethnic groups." All children should be given the opportunity to learn computer science so they may become the future innovators we hope they are destined to be!
The dates decided to hold CSED week were in recognition of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper's birthday (December 9, 1906). Hopper was an American computer scientist and a United States Rear Admiral.
Worked on the Mark I, a computer used in the war effort in the last part of WWII.
One of the first programmers to invent a program that converted English terms into machine code.
Awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1991
Awarded the National Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian award in the U.S.) award after she died in 1992.
She was also the first person to coin the term "bug" as it relates to glitches in a computer when a dead mot was found in one!
Our children do not need a computer to learn how to code. Below is a list of unplugged" activities from Code.org that allow students to step away from a screen and still be able to sharpen their computer programming skills!
Even though your children may not understand the word conditionals, they will understand the idea of using it to make sure something happens when it should.
Deck of playing cards
Pencil and paper
Students practice using algorithms to explain how to play a game of dice!
Pair of Dice
Paper and Pencil
Students code their names using binary code to create a fun bracelet to wear!
wooden beads
string or jewelry wire
jewelry clasps
Create a binary alphabet to encode an image
that will be decoded by their partner!
A pencil or colored pencils
worksheet provided on the website
For more "unplugged" activities visit Code.org or Hour of Code.com!