An Hour of Code–Something for CS Ed Week 2013

At the CSTA Conference earlier this week Hadi Partovi from Code.Org announced some plans for this year’s Computer Science Education Week. Specifically providing an hour of code for every student in the US.

What is an Hour of Code?

It's a 1 hour intro to computer science and programming, to give beginners a taste and to demystify "code". For existing CS teachers, it can be anything you want - get creative. For everybody else, we'll provide self-guided tutorials anybody can do, with just a web-browser or a smartphone, no experience needed. Note:  HTML does not count as an Hour of Code.

This seems like a great idea to me. This idea is something that a lot of people can take advantage of. Special assemblies, guest speakers, and many other things are still great ideas and I hope many schools will still do them. But this suggestion could bring a lot of attention to CS education if enough local schools take part.

There are about 18 weeks until this year’s CS Ed Week but it’s not too soon to start planning your events. And to think about how you might get involved in an Hour of Code in your school.