Steve Jobs once said, “Computer Science is a liberal art: it’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have a mastery of to some extent.”
The West Virginia University Center for Excellence in STEM Education, in partnership with CodeWV, championed computer science education across West Virginia for the third year in a row during National Computer Science Education Week from Dec. 9-15.
CodeWV educators hosted webinars to West Virginia teachers across the state, offering tools and resources for West Virginia teachers to host Hour of Code events in their home communities. Over 300 of West Virginia’s 726 schools participated. West Virginia students joined millions of others to reach a new milestone of participating in more than 835 million hours of code activities.
Serving as the largest learning event in history, the Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify “code.” The activity intends to show that anybody can learn the basics of coding and to broaden participation in the field of computer science.
The Hour of Code lives up to its expectations. A teacher from a Harrison County high school said, “After two class periods of coding activities, several students requested to do one of the CS Fundamentals courses. Hooray!”
Another teacher said, “These activities gave us an appreciation for coders. We don't realize how much coding takes place in the background for all the software and applications that we use on a daily basis. Seeing the code for a specific button click made it more real.”
The Hour of Code has become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science education, which serves as one of the many ways the WVUCE-STEM works with the West Virginia Department of Education, principals, teachers, parents, caregivers and students to offer fun, accessible ways to learn coding and computer science.