Some Observations About the Hour Of Code

by mistermchem

Let’s preface this post by saying that the Hour Of Code is the best educational event in this country ever. It has united political and industrial figureheads in promotion of a joint cause for the common good. It has demonstrated how this unity of purpose can create commercial opportunity for businesses. It has demonstrated the power of technology to disperse important educational lessons and opportunities to every member of the populace. Last, it has succeeded in making something very scary all of a sudden very cool, and being a part of the 13 million students and counting who have tried an hour of code through this website is something that many students can relate to.

Unfortunately, this program has neglected one highly important part of this whole process; our schools. In fact, it’s gone as far to undermine everything a child learns in school by providing an opportunity to learn what they don’t teach you, as delivered by some of the most famous people in the world. Before I go on to praising the program for all that it has done for computer science, let me first underscore this incredibly important message. The reason schools don’t teach computer science has nothing to do with the school.  No one in their right mind would teach computer science at a high school. They’d start with a salary almost half the amount they could make as a junior engineer. They would be leaving what’s often ranked one of the most relaxing jobs to enter what’s commonly referred to as one of the more stressful jobs. There is literally no incentive for a person with a degree in computer science to teach in high school. Some think that we can convert teachers who are willing, but I assure you, and this is coming from someone who is probably the most qualified convert there is, that there’s way more to teaching this skill than answering “how do I do this?” questions. Putting a person with some experience in the room is better than having nobody to teach the course, but to do it effectively you need someone with a background in computer science, just like you need a chemistry teacher with a background in chemistry. We can’t blame our schools for that because the whole system that recruits teachers is what’s broken, and as much as I’d love to see it changed, it won’t. 

I want to focus on the positive here though. The Hour of Code has united groups of people who are commonly publicly opposed to various issues. Just a few days ago, Facebook, among many other Internet giants, opposed the stance currently taken by the US Government on practices of spying via the internet.  Kanye West, whose controversial face graces the Hour of Code main video, has publicly opposed almost everyone else in the video with him. These are individuals from a diverse array of public and private sectors, areas that are not typically aligned. The people who put together this program have miraculously united these leaders and convinced them to collectively voice their support on video. I’d love to know how they managed that.

The consequences of this unity are more than a cool chance for people to learn how to code. Learnstreet, Codecademy, Scratch, and many others are private, internet-based tutorial websites that teach people how to code. They’ve all been asked to provide an hour-long tutorial for the program. As a result, they’re essentially competing for millions of new customers because you can be assured that people who enjoy their experience will go back for more. Many of my own students have. This is not only healthy competition but essential for capitalism and beneficial for future students. Note that this is not an advertising battle: it’s a sheer quality of product and experience battle. This is healthy for our educational goals, our economy, and for our technology. If only this could be applied to other areas of education, then our lagging quality of ed tech could finally catch up to the rest of the giant innovators.

There are more positive consequences. This project has demonstrated some of the potential ed tech has to rapidly disperse rich learning experiences to almost every student. Through sound cross platform development, the tutorials have been made available on every mobile device and computer available. They’re all accessed through one centralized location, and upon completion, they all award a certificate demonstrating achievement of an hour long coding session. As of writing, 13 million students participated in this program in four days. Before this event there may have been questions of this potential. No more.

Finally, and let’s not underestimate how important this is, the project has turned a skill which is often scary to many people in coding, into a fun hour of time. Technology has the power to do this with almost any skill, and this project took aim at the most scary one of all. The whole goal of the project was to get people to just try their hand at coding and at least 13 million people did. I would love to see data on how many people go back for more after their hour, which might be relatively simple to collect. It would also be great to see how many people are inspired to pursue further education in computer science, which would be much more difficult to unearth. Either way, this project has proved to be successful in at least breaking the barriers to computer science that stood in the way of a lot of students trying to learn it.

The Hour of Code is the best educational event in a long, long time. Many states have begun petitions to count computer science courses towards graduation. The recent success of this event will lend publicity to these movements and pressure politicians to make bold changes to state education rule, something needed to proceed forward with this important skill. Now, if only our politicians, CEOs, actors, musicians, and other leaders could get their heads together more often for a unified purpose, then perhaps we’ll continue to see the kind of momentum for underserved sectors that the Hour of Code has generated.