Dive Brief:
- In a piece for eSchool News, Arizona teacher and instructional coach Janice Mak lauds the benefits of Google's coding education program, CS First.
- Mak signed her school up as a CS First site when she was looking for student coding opportunities, particularly for girls, and the school now hosts 8-day coding clubs that teach students in grades 4-8 about coding and computer science.
- "The support from Google CS First is tremendous," writes Mak, who adds that the tech giant also sent her school 30 pairs of headphones and a variety of materials to benefit the club.
Dive Insight:
CS First has received good buzz since its launch. In March, EdSurge published a glowing piece about the program's strong following since its debut last year. Most interesting is how it targets girls and minorities. According to EdSurge, nearly 75% of the program's 27,000 participants are females and/or minorities.
The program has schools bring in "gurus," or volunteers, to help teach coding, and Google has recently taken a larger role in the somewhat difficult process of finding these experts.