As part of Computer Science Education Week, students around the world will participate in Hour of Code, a grassroots movement founded by national nonprofit Code.org to make coding more accessible. Millions of people have joined Hour of Code at home, at school, and at events in their communities, learning basic coding concepts through free one-hour tutorials.
Wrenchey says that its so important for students today to be comfortable with coding. The world is changing quickly, and coding and logic activities are part of all our futures. We see more automation opportunities every day from self-driving cars to applications in restaurants for ordering and paying at the end of the meal. There will be huge needs for jobs like user-experience designers and cyber-security forensics engineers, she says.
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We do a lot of different types of programming related to Hour of Code, says the Living Computer Museums Education Coordinator Nina Arens. In our workshops and field trips we work a lot with Scratch, Command-line workshops, micro:bit and mini-controllers that you can program. Along the way students learn project management, history of computing, intellectual property and think about art and design, in addition to learning the coding, the basic command line, conditionals and loops it takes to build a basic game, she says. These types of skills can transform the way students think critically, express themselves and solve complex problems and Hour of Code is a great place to start.
Students can learn to code in Minecraft game
Updated February 7, 2018 at 12:17 pm
Students try out an early preview of the new Minecraft Tutorial at the Skyway Boys Girls Club, in Skyway, Washington, on Oct. 16, 2017. (Microsoft)
Provided by Microsoft Philanthropies
Hour of Code is a grassroots movement founded by national nonprofit to make coding more accessible.
Originally published December 4, 2017 at 2:25 pm
Students try out the Minecraft Tutorial in Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington. (Microsoft)
This week, museums and schools across Seattle are hosting special Hour of Code events for Computer Science Education Week. TheLiving Computers Museum + Labsis offering three Minecraft Hour of Codeworkshops, and Microsoft stores in Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond are hosting Hour of Codeeventsfor students and families.
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In addition to Hour of Code, students are learning with Minecraft: Education Edition, a version of the game for classroom use that includes a special feature on coding. Melissa Wrenchey, a computer science and engineering teacher at Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington, uses the game in her classroom to get her students learning coding concepts and not just how to code their own games. For example, she uses tools like Redstone and MakeCode to incorporate algorithms, design thinking, engineering and even sustainable building concepts into a project. We use Minecraft: Education Edition to do things like model the 2023 light rail system in South Kirkland. The tool allows for students to take the text description from Sound Transit and turn it into a scaled model of the station for the current Park and Ride location.
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The Minecraft team at Microsoft has partnered with Seattle area schools and educators to create the new Hour of Code tutorial and features in Minecraft: Education Edition. Get started coding for free today at.
For the third consecutive year, Minecraft and Microsoft have released a special Hour of Code tutorial in partnership with Code.org. The tutorial,Heros Journey, introduces a fun character called the Agent and 12 new challenges that teach core coding concepts like loops, debugging, and functions. So far, nearly 70 million Minecraft Hour of Code sessions have introduced coding concepts to learners in over 100 countries.
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In fact, the World Economic Forumpredictsthat 65 percent of children who enter primary school today will work in jobs later that dont even exist yet. There is a growing need for students to build skills that will help them succeed in the 21st century workplace. Coding empowers students to go from simply interacting with technology to building their own creations, including apps and games, and exploring STEM careers.
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