The Hour of Code is upon us
What is the Hour of Code? According to the site code.org it is: a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Now what is it to me? Its a lot of fun and one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever participated in.
Growing up in a place in which people outside of town were told not stop at night, for good reason, and growing up with very few positive male role models, (a good number of males my age in my extended family are either dead or imprisoned) I do have a few role models that stand-out with blinding brilliance. First one is my father, who instilled a strong work ethic by his example of never seeming to miss a day of work. My uncle Ralph Lopez, a Director at the Los Angeles County Health Department showed by example, how to give back to the community. He did this many times for family members and community members throughout his life. One of the family members happened to be me, he helped pay for a semester of my college education one year. And finally, a gentleman who worked for TELACU, an education foundation in which I had won a scholarship from. He promised that at the end of his seminar he was going to prove to me that there were many doors of opportunity all around me, and he was going to show me how to unlock them. And so he did.
Now, many years later, after having worked for several fortune 500 companies, currently working for Microsoft, its time to give back and inspire, just as my father, uncle and that stranger from TELACU did for me. Last year I participated in this wonderful “Hour of Code” initiative to introduce Computer Science to the classroom in a fun way. Try it and see for yourself: http://studio.code.org/hoc/1. This was a tutorial that myself and several other parents introduced to 1-5th graders at a local school. The only problem was that the kids wanted to continue beyond the Hour we were given! We reached 15 million kids globally last year, this year we hope to reach 100 million. According to code.org, the Hour of Code was the fastest site to reach 15 million users, it did so in just 5 days. It took Facebook 3 years to do that, it took Twitter 2.5 years. More girls tried computer science during those 5 days than in the last 70 years! My point is…THIS IS A BIG DEAL!!!
After the great feedback and participation of the Hour of Code at my kids’ school, the principal eloquently stated that he believes society has reached a Tipping Point, referring to the book of the same name by Malcolm Gladwell. A tipping point on the belief that technology can help teach our kids how to think critically so that you realize its ok to fail as long as you keep trying (heck that’s what I do on a daily basis at Microsoft and I get PAID FOR IT!!!). The tipping point is defined as ‘the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point’. I agree. So let’s turn up the heat! Hour of Code, Dec. 8-14, www.hourofcode.org
