COMPUTER SCIENCE MAY be critical to careers of the future, but kids today don’t much care about it. For the most part, they still need convincing that coding is cool.
A new partnership between Code.org and Lucasfilm should help.
Recently, as part of its annual Hour of Code event, Code.org launched a free online tutorial that prompts kids to build their own games, based on characters in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Star Wars heroines Princess Leia and Rey, a character from the new film, will lead students through the lessons, where they’ll learn to write code to design their own games featuring characters like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
“One of the most important things for us is to make computer science more popular, to broaden participation and get students of all ages and all backgrounds to give it a shot,” says Hadi Partovi, who founded Code.org. So far at least, Code.org has been successful in achieving that goal. Of the 5 million students currently registered on Code.org, around 2 million are girls and around 2 million are black or Hispanic.
Continue reading
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
