Computer Science Education Week

The annual Computer Science Education Week happened this year on December 6-12. The purpose of this week is to inspire K-12 students to learn computer science, celebrate the contribution of students and teachers to computer science, and advocate for equity.

History

This world-wide event that was started by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) in 2009. The launch of CSEdWeek was funded and led by several organizations including CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association), National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), the Computing Research Association (CRA), Google, Intel, and Microsoft. A congressional resolution recognized the first CSEdWeek with the intent that it will be celebrated every year during Grace Hopper's birthday, a pioneer of programming that invented the first compiler.

CS Everywhere

This year's theme highlights the impact that computer science makes everywhere, especially in our daily lives. The importance of CS was shown by emphasizing the connections between computer science and other subjects, as well as CS related career paths. One of the areas computer science impacts is public health as data is being used to identify outbreaks of COVID-19 and slow the spread. Computer science has also transformed construction by allowing buildings to be quickly 3D printed and from recycled materials. CSEdWeek also highlighted the impact computer science is having on education, social justice, sustainable energy, online safety, space exploration, gaming, and more. Since computer science is everywhere, CSEdWeek emphasized the importance of teaching computer science everywhere.

Hour of Code

During CSEdWeek, students and educators from around the world participated in the Hour of Code. The Hour of Code was designed to show that anyone can code. An Hour of Code event can be hosted by anyone using the resources that Hour of Code and CSEdWeek provide for different ages and languages. The Hour of Code is not confined to CSEdWeek, So far in 2021, over 85,706 events have been hosted all over the world.

Advocate

CSEdWeek advocates for policies that support computer science education. In the United States, 23 states have adopted a policy to provide all high school students with access to CS courses. Nationwide, only 47% of high schools teach a CS class. CSEdWeek advocates to increase the amount of high school students with access to CS education as CS drives innovation in the U.S. economy, but isn't being widely taught throughout K-12 education. This lack of CS education is why organization like ROC Code are so important to ensuring that as many students as possible have access to invaluable coding lessons.

Learn More

If you would like to learn more about CSEdWeek or learn how to host an Hour of Code, you can use these links: https://www.csedweek.org/advocate and https://hourofcode.com/us.