Thursday 6 November 2014

The Hour of Code

You've heard of Earth Hour, but have you heard of the Hour of Code? Code.org has launched the Hour of Code event internationally aimed at spreading computer science education to 100 million students across the globe. It will be held on Dec 8 to 14 of 2014. Corporate bigwigs like Mark Zuckerberg, John Doerr and Rich Barton have all contributed to this cause by donating a collective 1.25 million to crowdfunding website - Indiegogo.

Watch this interesting video below with keynote comments by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey on What Most Schools Don't Teach.




Read about Hadi Partovi on why he started this initiative. He noted that there has been more computer science jobs than there are graduates. He feels that his home country of Iran and United Kingdom lead the United States in terms of providing a computer science education. In the United Kingdom, computer programming is an integral part of the school curriculum. Everywhere else, part of the world needs to catch up.

Well said indeed, most of my Computer Engineering and Computer Science graduate friends have long since relinquished what they had learned in school and taken on jobs in other fields of business, insurance, finance and many more. 

I remembered that when I was 16, the World Wide Web became my window to the world. I was one of the few students in my class to have Internet access in 1997. I created and updated my very first Geocities website that year and learned HTML code by reading up from www.w3schools.com. The possibilities were limitless - I created a personal homage website, a class website and even a full-fledged e-commerce website with shopping cart facility.

You'll learn from the Hour of Code event that computer programming is accessible to all and is suitable for anyone ages 4 to 104+.

Check out the event, tutorials and how you can contribute at http://csedweek.org/

For tutorials on how to create your first Angry Bird or Pac Man programme, go to Khan Academy for free lessons.





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