Exciting things are happening in computer science education this week—and NYC Public Schools are helping to lead the way.
This week (December 5–11, 2022), hundreds of City public schools across the five boroughs are participating in Computer Science Education Week, our annual national celebration of computer science (CS) instruction and programming in elementary, middle, and high schools.
Supported by over 100,000 educators, thousands of schools, and hundreds of community partners across the City and around the country, Computer Science Education Week encourages K–12 students of all backgrounds to explore CS fields, practices, and activities while gaining valuable classroom experience in one of the most lucrative and transformative disciplines today.
Throughout the week, students across the five boroughs are participating in hackathons, designing computer programs, building cool robots and drones, and completing other coding projects, that encourage students to problem-solve, think critically, and work as part of a team. By engaging in activities and projects like these, our students are gaining valuable experiences that open up a broad range of possibilities for their college and/or career prospects in the years to come.
NYC Public Schools offer more computer science programming to students than any other school district in the United States thanks to programs like the recently announced Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE) initiative. CITE, which is funded through a public-private partnership that includes CUNY, Google, Robin Hood, and Gotham Gives, aims to train more than 1,000 current and future City K–12 public school teachers to deliver computer science and digital literacy instruction to their students.
One of the best aspects of CS Education Week is that it helps K–12 students of all skill levels to understand how computer science can help people come up with practical solutions for everyday issues. In prior years, City students created holiday cards with paper circuits, developed apps that provided real-time data about MTA bus routes, and programmed algorithms that could be used to help push bilingual alerts to families during emergencies.
At the heart of CS Education Week is the Hour of Code, a one-hour online coding tutorial for users of all ages that is available in over 45 languages. Since 2013, over 100 million students, including hundreds of thousands of NYC public school students, have participated in the Hour of Code, with the vast majority of participating students being members of groups who are historically underrepresented in computer science.
And the Hour of Code doesn’t just have to be completed in the classroom—families can help their children complete their online coding tutorials at home. Indeed, if you’re able to read this blog post on screen, you already have everything you need to host an Hour of Code in your home!
To learn more about Computer Science Education Week, visit csedweek.org, and follow @CSforAllNYC on Twitter.
On behalf of the NYC DOE, we thank all of our teachers, students, school administrators, and community partners who are helping to make this year’s Computer Science Education Week our best one yet!
Check in with your school to see what activities are being held for CS Education Week this year!
Banner photo by Alena Darmel. Used under Creative Commons license. Original can be found on Pexels.
