As Cursive Fades, Coding in Schools Gains Momentum
By Tim Walker
Last week, more than 10 million students across the nation spent one hour of class time writing lines of computer code. That’s twice the number of students who have ever taken a computer science class. They were participating in the “Hour of Code,” a weeklong nationwide campaign to motivate kids to take programming tutorials, provided by the nonprofit Code.org. The headline event of Compute Science Education Week, the “Hour of Code” was sponsored by the heaviest hitters in the tech industry and even endorsed by President Obama. By the end of the week, the initiative had racked up some impressive numbers.Sandy Rohweder’s fifth grade students at Lyndon Station Elementary School in Wisconsin, who didn’t have any prior exposure to coding before participating, chose the tutorial based around Angry Birds.
“It was amazing to watch them because you could see the wheels turning,” Rohweder recalls. “They were able to go through the various levels until it got a little complicated. But they were really engaged and were collaborating with another.”
Lisa Mims, a fifth grade teacher in New Castle, Delaware, saw similar results with her class.
“Coding fosters so many skills – it’s not just about the latest trend in classroom technology,” Mims says. “My students were creating, thinking critically, and working together. And it may eventually give them a career