National Winning App: The Journey of Four Seventh Graders from East Flatbush, Brooklyn

Four middle schoolers realized their dreams of creating a winning mobile app and earning a trip to the nation’s capital. Jayden Mclean, Jayden Byfield, Tristan Hitchins, and Florentz Macguffie (Left to right) won first place in the 2023 Congressional App Challenge for their app “SurVive.”

More

Chalk Radio: What’s Worth Making? with Prof. Hal Abelson

In this episode, Professor Abelson reminisces about his early experiences in computer science and discusses the importance of computer education for everyone — especially children. Fundamentally, Abelson believes that computer scientists need to confront not only the technical challenges of designing new systems, but also a deeper, humanist question: “What, in fact, is worth making?”

More

Case Study: Mainstreaming Computational Thinking Education

The CoolThink@JC program initiated by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust is a nine-year educational initiative which aims to provide computational thinking education to upper primary school students. Its mission is to nurture students’ proactive use of technologies for social good from a young age, and offer equitable access and mainstream computational thinking education in the formal curriculum.

More

Code Girls United Uses MIT App Inventor to Teach Girls Coding

When Marianne Smith was teaching computer science in 2016 at Flathead Valley Community College, in Kalispell, Mont., the adjunct professor noticed the female students in her class were severely outnumbered. Smith says she believed the disparity was because girls were not being introduced to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in elementary and middle school.