Hoffman Middle School Students Learn to Code, Thanks to Hour of Code

Hoffman Middle School students in technology education classes participated in [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 9-15). The Hour of Code, a five-day-old initiative to get kids to take programming tutorials during Computer Science Education Week, is an opportunity for every student to try computer science for one hour. The goal for this year’s event was to recruit 10 million to join in and do the Hour of Code but it is estimated that 15 million students across the U.S. participated.

Hour of Code had support from many leaders and celebrities. It was on the front page of both Google.com and Apple.com. It also had the support of U.S. President Barack Obama who made a promo video. According to one article, Code.org’s efforts apparently drove so much traffic to Khan Academy that the nonprofit educational Web site went down. But the strongest support for the initiative came teachers and schools who used the programs in their classrooms.

Hadi Partovi co-founded the organization with his brother Ali Partovi are both tech entrepreneurs and have raised tens of millions of dollars to help increase the number of computer science classes offered in U.S. schools and to make it a part of the core curriculum. They also wanted to increase interest among female students and students of color. But the major objective was to get more students to try learning to code to interest them in computer science.

According to Dwanna Callaway, information literacy specialist at the campus, the tutorials are written as games that features artwork from favorites such as Angry Birds, PopCap Games, and Plants vs. Zombies.

“The students really enjoyed participating in the initiative,” said Callaway. “In fact, while Computer Education Week is over, the Hoffman students are still enjoying creating their coding projects.”