Code.org, a non-profit organization, is trying to instill a better understanding of coding into students with the help of some high profile tech experts under a campaign named “Hour of Code”. Hour of Code is an initiative to impart computer programming skills to 10 million K-12 students in the United States during Computer Science Education week. The event will run from December 9th to 15th.
Campaign supported by tech biggies
Many tech geniuses will join the cause like Bill Gates, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Giant tech firms who are supporting the cause include Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), and others.
“Thanks to the amazing support of new partners and donors, the Hour of Code campaign will launch our long-term mission to give every student the opportunity to learn computer science,” according to Code.org co-founder and CEO Hadi Partovi. Partovi said in a statement that the outreach hopes to help make students job ready in the software field.
Students will be given coding lessons through tutorials available online or on smartphone, or in a classroom setting. Tutorials have been created by different groups including Code.org, which created tutorials by collecting inputs from Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Twitter, and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) engineers. Tutorials are in the form of learning games and feel like Rovio’s Angry Birds and PopCap Games’ Plants vs. Zombies. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg will also give guest lectures.
Alluring prizes from Code.org
Participating in the Hour of Code is optional, but those who do will have the chance to win many tech-focused prizes such as 10GB of free Dropbox storage, a full classroom of computers, and a chance to have a group video conference with Gates, Dorsey and others.
The non-profit organization was established this year to take computer programming education to schools, and direct people to the next level by using online coding tools. The basic idea of this organization is to enable code programming learning for every student. The board of advisors includes superstars of the tech field like investors Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, and Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston.