An Hour of Code - Computer Science Education Week Activities

I am not sure if a lot of you know this, but it is Computer Science Education Week this week. (Dec 9 - 15). Its OK if you forgot, I did. Luckily a colleague of mine, Mr. Anderson (The Oreo Double Stuff Guy) brought it to my attention.

To promote this week and spotlight why it is important, the organization Code.org is making a challenge to schools and educators around the country to get 10 million kids to spend at least an hour this week using computer programming skills. Here is a link to their list of activities: http://code.org/learn

I bet a lot of you are thinking right now that you don't know anything about computer programming skills, and that this might not be for you. Please keep reading and give it a chance! There are some very easy activities that can be done both online on a computer or even without a computer. All of the activities require students to think in such a way that they need to break a problem and solution down into smaller parts that they can then use to create a solution. This is the essence of the thinking needed by a computer programmer!

http://allthingsd.com/20131208/hour-of-code-calls-on-students-to-program-computers/ 

Why should we care about this type of thinking? Well according to the data shown here which was created from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of computer science jobs is growing much faster than the number of qualified individuals to fill those jobs. It is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in this field in 2020, and only 400,000 people to fill them... that is a million high paying jobs our students can compete for!

Anything we can do to spark an interest or reinforce these types of skills with our students can help them start on a path to a better future for themselves. 

The activities below can be used with students of all ages. Please take a look and see if there is something there that you could try with your students. If kids are playing games like Minecraft, they will love these activities!

1. The My Robotic Friends Activity - Break down tasks the way a computer programmer would and "program" your friends to complete the task!

2) Angry Birds Maze - Program 
the angry bird to get the piggy! Use the command steps to the right of the picture to choose what your bird does and run your program. Keep trying until you get it. Each level will add more steps and challenges! This simple game can prepare kids for many programming activities like the free software tool Scratch.

3) Light-bot - Try out this addictive and fun programming game as you program your robot to traverse the Q-bert like terrain and light up the blue squares. Each level builds skills upon the last and gets more and more challenging. This game can be played online or on Apple and Android devices.














*** Update - I had two 8 year olds totally engrossed in the Light-Bot and Angry Birds games above. Here are their certificates to prove it!