Did you know that only 45% of high schools even teach computer science? And yet, surveys show that 90% of parents want their child to study computer science.
Did you know that 67% of all new jobs in the STEM fields are in computing? And yet, only 10% of STEM graduates are in computer science.
Did you know that a computer science major can earn up to 40% more than the college average? And the average computer science major’s lifetime earnings are three times that of someone who only graduated high school.
Did you know that computing jobs are the #1 source of new wages in the U.S.? And the number of job openings in this field is projected to grow at twice the rate of all other jobs. ***
Wise, of course, is a STEAM-focused school, and the “T” in STEAM stands for technology. As evidence of our focus on the use of technology as a teaching and learning tool, we are looking forward to soon unveiling to you our Technology Scope & Sequence document, which will show you the range and depth of skills that we teach to our students in grades K – 6.
In the meantime, we participated this week with thousands of other schools worldwide in Hour of Code events. For the seventh consecutive year Wise School teamed up with Code.org to support Hour of Code, a one-hour global coding challenge designed to introduce students to computer science and celebrate Computer Science Education Week.
Hour of Code doesn’t really stop after one hour. At Wise School students learn computer programming as part of a robust technology curriculum, using resources from CodeSpark Academy, Tufts University’s Scratch Jr., MIT’s Scratch, along with robotics programming using We Do 2.0, Lego Mindstorms EV3 programming language, and curricular materials developed at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute.
During technology class this week, Wise Students in grades K-6 will be learning on the Code.org website. At home if they wish, students in Grades 2-6 can log onto their portal link in their Google Classroom account. They use the same username and password year after year, so you can see their progress over time. Kindergarten and first grade students will simply go straight to the Code.org website. Once students have logged on they can choose to learn programming languages such as Blockly, Scratch or Swift. They can also learn about artificial intelligence and machine learning in a variety of engaging scenarios. The learning modules expand every year.
Parents who are curious about Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week are invited to explore Code.org at home. Maybe you will even take the challenge and code for an hour yourself!
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about technology instruction, robotics or even Wise Radio at Wise School, please do not hesitate to reach out to Ms. Hoffman at [email protected].
Judy Hoffman, Director of Technology Integration
John Heffron, Elementary Principal
***Data from csedweek.org
