Tag Archives: White House

Coding Education, Education

Turner Joins Obama Coding Initiative

President Barack Obama has made no bones about his push to get more young people into coding. Now Turner Broadcasting is putting its name into the fold. Consider a recent article for Fortune titled “Why Turner Is Investing $30 Million in Obama’s Coding Initiative.”

John Gaudiosi of Fortune writes, “President Barack Obama has made the ‘Computer Science For All’ initiative a key priority for his last year in office. And Turner Broadcasting is the latest company to invest in this initiative, which focuses on making coding and other hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning an integral part of every student’s education. Turner’s $30 million investment in engaging kids in creative coding will roll out this year and become part of how Cartoon Network connects with its 6- to 11-year-old audience moving forward, according to Christina Miller, president and general manager of Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Boomerang. The network’s multimedia platform reaches over 94 million children. ‘Technology is transforming the access point for the next generation of creators and we have the outreach to go to our audience and let them know that if they want to be an animator or a storyteller there are PC tools available at their fingertips,’ Miller says. ‘We know this generation of kids is different than the one before it because they want to participate. They’re more of an open source generation.’ Turner has partnered with the MIT Media Lab to alert kids that the free block-based coding language Scratch is available. The Adventure Time characters were used in a recent DIY.org animation contest as a way for kids to use Scratch to code simple animation like the show’s characters walking.”

When it comes to customized coding education, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our winter camps today!

Coding Education

What’s Behind the Latest White House Coding Push?

The White House is pushing even harder than before to make sure children throughout the U.S. have the right tools to be proficient coders. Consider a recent article for the Atlantic titled “The Reality of Coding Classes.”

Mikhail Zinshteyn of the Atlantic writes, “The White House wants every child in the United States to learn computer science. The president’s plan to reach that goal? Ask Congress to fund a new $4 billion program for states and another $100 million for districts to train teachers and purchase the tools ‘so that our elementary, middle, and high schools can provide opportunities to learn computer science for all students,’ Obama said in his weekly address on January 30. With Congress’s approval, the $4 billion will be spent over three years to train teachers, connect schools with corporate and nonprofit partners, and expand instructional material. States would apply for a slice of the $4 billion and have five years to use the money. The funding programs, which will appear in the president’s forthcoming budget proposal for 2017, are just the latest effort from the White House to bring more science and technology education to students. The Obama Administration is hopeful that the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced No Child Left Behind, signals support for additional education spending. But is advocacy for the plan relying on faulty notions about the economy’s need for more coders? And is the price tag enough to underwrite the president’s ambitious goal? The United States spends magnitudes more on educating the nation’s public-school students than the computer-science money the White House is proposing: Over half a trillion dollars go toward education spending, amounting to roughly $10,800 per student—a tenth of that coming from federal resources. On instruction alone, federal, state, and local governments spent $326 billion in 2013. With 50 million students in U.S. public schools, the $4.1 billion proposal and additional $135 million from currently funded programs would translate into $86 per kid.”

When it comes to sustainable, customized coding education, you can’t go wrong with CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our winter camps today!

Coding Curriculum, Coding Education

White House Presents Award to Inspirational Young Coder

Coding is a serious need for students in the United States. By 2020, one million computing jobs will go unfilled in the United States due to a lack of appropriate preparation of our future workforce. Right now, students are graduating from excellent universities without the ability to obtain positions that utilize their expertise, yet someone who graduates from college with a computer science degree is very likely to obtain a desirable and high earning position immediately.

The White House is well aware of this. Recently, President Barack Obama honored a teenager working hard to inspire more young girls to code. The Washington Post took a look at this in a recent article titled “White House honors teenager who inspires girls to do computer coding.” T Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post writes, “Swetha Prabakaran dreamed of becoming a physician, using the power of medicine to heal the sick and to are for the ailing. She studied biology in middle school, but the course of her life changed during her freshman year at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Virginia. She took an introductory class on computer science and learned about programming, becoming fascinated with coding and the intricacies of how to teach computers to make life easier for people. ‘I learned I could help people in the same way with computers and not just a stethoscope,’ said Swetha, 15, a junior from Ashburn, Va. Earlier this month, Swetha was honored at the White House as one of 11 young women named ‘champions of change,’ for her work as the founder of Everybody Code Now! The nonprofit operates in 12 states and has partnerships in India and Ghana to help elementary school students, from kindergarten through fifth grade, learn how to code. According to a White House statement, the Champions of Change program ‘was created as an opportunity for the White House to feature individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities.’”

At CodeRev Kids, we understand the potential for empowerment that coding and tech careers can offer to communities. We customize our lessons to serve all students, no matter their level of expertise.

Our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages. In addition to being highly informative, our lessons put an emphasis on fun. As a result, our students stay engaged and internalize coding concepts and creativity in the process.

If you want to give your child a quality coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids!