Birches Elementary School Students Participate in Computer Science Education Week

Will.i.am. even calls coding a "super power" in a for Hour of Code, a movement organized to encourage schools to teach students across the globe about computer programming. This year, Norfolk Public Schools has more than 2,000 students kindergarten through 12th grade participating. "As I observed the various classes participating in their own 'hours of code, ' I saw students who were 100% immersed in what they were doing".

The administrators in the school board office spent their lunch hour on Monday coding, too.

Marguerite Dasso, a math teacher and technology specialist at Smart, said she expected some frustrated students Friday.

In a Thursday blog post commemorating the signing of the so-called Every Child Succeeds Act, Code.org COO Cameron Wilson explained how the designation will put computer science on a level playing field with other subjects.

Comparing the district's computer science offerings to a sampling of 24 area independent and parochial schools highlights the problem: 79 percent (19) of independent or parochial high schools we surveyed offer some sort of introductory computing course, and 21 percent (5) offer AP computer science.

"The research has proven that the more languages children learn at a young level, the more able they are to use language in any form in the future", she said. On iPad Minis, they used basic drag-and-drop commands to program their droid to do things like pick up scrap metal and evade Stormtroopers.

"I want to be a robotics engineer", Adrian Fuller said as he worked through a more advanced tutorial drawing shapes and angles with loops of code. "It opens up that spark of something that they may have never done before".

The nationwide goal is to get 10 million students to try coding for an hour.

This week, in concert with Hour of Code, a new version of ScratchJr is launching that features characters from PBS Kids cartoon shows, like Wild Kratts and Odd Squad.

"I think it's important that we, as educators, take risks just like we ask our students to do", Galaviz said.

"The world is getting smaller and it's getting smaller because of technology". Jefferson was the only school in Nebraska to be selected.

Audubon Elementary School and College View Elementary School are joining schools across the country in a computer programming history-making event, The Hour of Code.

This year, she's partnered with Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. "It's fun to be a part of something that I know is relevant".

"For numerous participants who took part this week it was their first time to learn about coding is all about".

"We are teaching them not for the jobs we have now".