This week is Computer Science Education Week, and it’s a great opportunity to tell you about the Hour of Code, a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. The Hour of Code is a free one-hour introduction to computer science (available in 40 languages), designed to demystify coding and show that anybody can learn the basics. So far over 100 million students have tried their hand with the Hour of Code.
Students who study coding learn more than coding skills. They acquire valuable softer skills, like problem solving, creative thinking, collaboration and entrepreneurship, which can be applied to challenges in their own lives and in the world. The ability to code is becoming a fundamental skillset for today’s student generation—alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. Microsoft aspires to help students of all ages, backgrounds and skillsets to learn to code, and the Hour of Code is a fundamental tool for capturing young imaginations.
This year’s HOC tutorial, now available at http://code.org/mc, introduces players to basic coding skills through the popular Minecraft environment. Minecraft is a wildly popular, open-ended, collaborative game—making it well-suited to experiential learning. Players have the power to build the world they want to see, they can dream up virtually anything and then bring their ideas to life in a shared world.
To celebrate the partnership of Minecraft and Code.org, we are again empowering our Microsoft Student Partners (MSP), Microsoft Most Valuable Partners (MVPs), Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCT), Microsoft IT Academies and our employees worldwide with this free Minecraft coding tutorial. We know that many of you from these communities are planning to lead Hour of Code sessions with students in classrooms and coding clubs around the world, and want to share this opportunity with others. If you aren’t planning or participating in a HOC event, I challenge you to share this tutorial with one student – maybe a niece or neighbor – and show them how approachable coding can be.
I encourage you to join us in our efforts to teach students the beauty of technology during Computer Science Education Week. Inspire the next generation to become our future technologists and innovators. It isn’t too late to host an Hour of Code using our event toolkit and continue the learning at Microsoft.com/HourOfCode.
Join us in introducing students to code – and empower them to change the world.
Guggs
@stevenguggs