Dive Brief:

• The A. Harry Moore School of New Jersey City University celebrated Computer Science Education Week this year with a coding carnival that featured universal design principles, a reflection of its commitment to making “Computer Science for All.”
• Courtney Pepe, supervisor of curriculum and instruction at the school, and Stephanie Talalai, technology coordinator, write for EdTech: Focus on K-12 that one carnival station gave advanced students the chance to drag and drop code to control a Dash robot, while a modified activity let other students push the right button to have the robot launch a ball.
• Outside of Computer Science Education Week, physical and occupational therapists still use robots with students, including to entice them to practice their ambulation skills, and computational thinking factors into music therapy.

Dive Insight:

Code.org estimated 100 million students would participate in an Hour of Code event during Computer Science Education Week, the first week in December. These events have been incredibly successful at raising awareness about and interest in computer science education. Still, it is very important that schools go beyond the Hour of Code or simple makerspaces that give students a chance to tinker with robotics.

A new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course allows the uninitiated to go deeper into the fundamentals, which can prepare them for a range of STEM fields in college and career. Even beyond this direct connection to continuing education or future work, learning computational thinking can help students in life.