Held every December to commemorate the birthday of the world's first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, today marks the start of Computer Science Education Week, a program to inspire students in grades K-12 to take an interest in computer science education by participating in Hour of Code. Over 48 million people have already signed up to take coding classes, and organizers want to reach 100 million students by the end of 2014.
President Obama kicked off Hour of Code by encouraging young people to develop their programming skills and honor America's heritage as a "nation of tinkerers and inventors." In fact, he tried his hand at a Code.org program with a group of students earlier this week, where he also highlighted the facts that women were some of the earliest innovators in computer sciences.
Want to have a student you know participate or take the week's celebrations to get involved yourself? Opt for one of these ways to celebrate Hour of Code whatever your age.
The iTunes App Store has a landing page of related Hour of Code apps including those made just for kids, like Hopscotch, to grown-up-themed apps, like Codecademy's Code Hour. iTunes U courses like Stanford's Programming Methodology give a deeper (and free!) look into the world of computer science.
With six days remaining, An Hour of Code For Every Student is already IndieGogo's most successful crowdfunding campaign to date, raising $4.2 million of its $5 million goal to give every student an hour of coding education in the classroom. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged $1 million to the cause, and other donors and companies including Bill Gates, Google, and Microsoft have pledged to match contributions dollar for dollar. Currently, Code.org estimates nine out of 10 schools don't offer computer programming classes, so this money will be directed to training teachers on adding computer science to their curriculum.
Software engineers can volunteer their time by teaching at a programming club like Coder Dojo. Or help to improve Code.org's tutorials by spending 10 minutes to add user feedback that will help students better understand where they may have missed a step and made an error in one of the 100-plus puzzles Code.org offers students.