Computer Science Education Week - an initiative to encourage K-12 students to learn about computer science - is December 7-13, 2015. As a speech-language pathologist who learned how to code iOS apps, I fully support the initiative. I think there are very fun and rewarding opportunities in the world of computer programming. And even if students have no desire to become computer programmers, they can still learn lifelong skills including creativity, logic, and problem solving through coding. For the past two years, my students (middle school and high school ages) and I participated in the hour of code as part of CSED Week. We did the Angry Birds puzzles (ages 4+) that involve dragging-and-dropping "blocks of code" via a visual programming language in order for the red bird to capture the [...]

Last year around this time, I posted about Computer Science Education Week. In the post, I mentioned the goal was for 10 million individuals to participate in the hour of code. That goal was easily surpassed, and I see now on the Computer Science Education Week website that nearly 50 million individuals have participated! This year, the founder of the project hopes to reach 100 million, which you can be a part of even if you don't have any experience with computer programming. Just about anyone can easily use one of the free interactive resources that allow you to drag and drop blocks to make a character move. You can do this with a series of Angry Birds puzzles (ages 4+), or with a series of Frozen puzzles (ages 8+). Via the puzzles, you learn logic skills required in computer programm[...]

This week, December 9-15, is Computer Science Education Week with several websites determined to increase awareness regarding coding (aka computer programming). One of the websites, code.org, has an initiative called The Hour of Code, which provides anyone with free access to learn coding for an hour. The initiative is seeking 10 million individuals who are willing to participate, hoping that many of these individuals will pursue an estimated 1.4 million computer science jobs expected by the year 2020. Our owner, Eric Sailers, has already participated in The Hour of Code: https://twitter.com/esailers/status/410073570660732928. Plus, he is planning to educate his students this week about coding. Here is his lesson plan that may inspire you to do something similar with your students: [...]