It’s becoming more and more obvious that we need to go beyond teaching kids how to use technology and extend curriculum to teaching them how to create it. Two weeks ago I was presented with just that chance – by coordinating and delivering (along with some stellar volunteers) our first ever Day of Code to students in grades two through six. We kicked the day off assembly style with some words from Bradley Hoos, co-founder of Grand Circus Co., and then jumped right into coding 101 through a duo of blockly programming and an Angry Birds interface. Click here for resources to learn or teach code to K12 students.

As is to be expected, some children got further than others, but all of them enjoyed themselves and expressed an interest in continuing their computer science education beyond the 45 minute class period. For the latter we provided a handout with 10 self-guided web resources for our emerging programmers to keep at it over the summer. My personal highlight? One third-grader told us she wanted to become a programmer to: “create more jobs”.

This post was originally published to Macro Connect‘s website