The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be over one million computing jobs open by 2022. Because of the increasing need for those who know programming languages and computer science majors in the technology world, a nonprofit organization has taken the initiative to teach younger students how to code across the world. It has gained recognition from the President, Apple and Microsoft. This not for profit is called Code.org – and hosts the annual Hour of Code, with more and more participants each year.
Code.org was founded in 2013, and since then over eight billion lines of code have been written by seven million students around the globe. This organization is putting forth the effort to include more Computer Science classes in schools and is giving donations to schools who participate. They provide online teaching materials and schools across the globe are hosting these “hours of code” to encourage their younger students to find an interest in coding and potentially pursue a career in it. They even give courses to teachers who want to benefit their students and teach them an Introduction to Code class. Aside from their mission to gauge interest in Computer Science, they also want more minorities and females to participate in the field. On Code.org’s online learning community, almost half of the participants are girls unlike out in the field – where only four out of every twenty computer science students are female.
Devon Ramdial, a senior Cisco Networking student, says that “Coding and programming should be taught at a younger age. I wish that sites like these were available when I was in elementary school – I would probably be a lot more well off now. Who knows what this generation can accomplish by growing up knowing how to code?”
