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theodp writes To address the challenge of rapidly increasing CS enrollments and increasing diversity, reports the Computing Education Blog, Google in November put out an RFP to universities for its invite-only 3X in 3 Years: CS Capacity Award program, which aims "to support faculty in finding innovative ways to address the capacity problem in their CS courses." In the linked-to RFP document, Google suggests that "students that have some CS background" should not be allowed to attend in-person intro CS courses where they "may be more likely to create a non-welcoming environment," and recommends that they instead be relegated to online courses. According to a recent NSF press release, this recommendation would largely exclude Asian and White boys from classrooms, which seems to be consistent with a Google-CodeCademy award program that offers $1,000 bonuses to teachers who get 10 or more high school kids to take a JavaScript course, but only counts students from "groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science (girls, or boys who identify as African American, Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native)." The project suggested in the Google RFP — which could be worth $1.5 million over 3 years to a large CS department — seems to embrace-and-extend a practice implemented at Harvey Mudd College years ago under President Maria Klawe, which divided the intro CS offering into separate sections based upon prior programming experience to — as the NY Times put it — reduce the intimidation factor of young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. Google Director of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson, whose name appears on the CS Capacity RFP, is also on the Board of Code.org (where Klawe is coincidentally an Advisory Board member), the K-12 learn-to-code nonprofit that has received $3+ million from Google and many millions more from other tech giants and their execs. Earlier this week, Code.org received the blessing of the White House and NSF to train 25,000 teachers to teach CS, stirring unease among some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools.

theodp writes "The Mercury News' Mike Cassidy reports that women are missing out on lucrative careers in computer science. 'The dearth of women in computing,' writes Cassidy, 'has the potential to slow the U.S. economy, which needs more students in the pipeline to feed its need for more programmers. It harms women by excluding them from some of the best jobs in the country. And it damages U.S. companies, which studies show would benefit from more diverse teams.' The promise of better financial results, says Anita Borg Institute Director Denise Gammal, is making diversity a business imperative. It's 'the sort of imperative that cries out for a movement,' argues Cassidy, 'maybe this time one led not by Rosie the Riveter, but by Peggy the Programmer.' So, where will Peggy the Programmer come from? Well, Google is offering $100 to girls attending U.S. public high schools who complete a Codecademy JavaScript course. 'Currently only 12% of computer science graduates are women,' explains Codecademy, 'and great tech companies like Google want to see more smart girls like you enter this awesome profession!' Google joins tech giant-backed Code.org in incentivizing teachers to bring the next generation of girls to the CS table.

But Silicon Valley claims the talent crisis is now (although there are 19 billion reasons to question SV's hiring acumen). So, what about the women who are here now, asks Dr. AnnMaria De Mars. 'If you are overlooking the women who are here now,' De Mars writes, 'what does that tell the girls you are supposedly bringing up to be the next generation of women in tech that you can overlook 15 years from now? Why do we hear about 16-year-old interns far more than women like me? If it is true, as the New York Times says, that in 2001-2 28% of computer science degrees went to women compared to the 10% or so now — where are those women from 12 years ago? It seems to me that when people are looking at minorities or women to develop in their fields, they are much more interested in the hypothetical idea of that cute 11-year-old girl being a computer scientist someday than of that thirty-something competing with them for market share or jobs. If there are venture capitalists or conference organizers or others out there that are sincerely trying to promote women who code, not girls, I've never met any. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it means that whoever they are seeking out, it isn't people like me.'"

For around a decade programming was not part of the computer curriculum in the U.K.. Through a lot of hard work from advocates and the industry this will soon change, but a large skills gap still exists. Tim Gurney is just one of many working on closing that gap. His Coding in Schools initiative aims to "work with schools and students and inspire the next generation of computer programmers and software engineers by creating and spearheading schools based programming clubs." I recently sat down with Tim to talk about who's working on the problem and what yet needs to be done. Read below to see what he's doing to change the state of things. samzenpus: Could you give us a little background about you and your project?

Tim: Yeah. My background, I spent the last 16 years working as a professional system administrator and software engineer. I've worked in many different arenas. I worked in research and development, and education. Most recently I worked in government, and military, most recently within an ISP here in the U.K.

In the last couple years I started my own business called Wolf Software. Out of that came along the coding in schools initiative. The big problem that's been identified, at least in the U.K., is there is a big skills gap for programmers. Something we noticed when trying to recruit software engineers is the younger end of the industry, the people coming out of University, or the people who have been out of University two or three years seem to have little or no real exposure to programming and programming techniques.

The U.K. government changed the curriculum around 12 years ago and removed programming from the computing curriculum. They're only recently bringing it back. It's actually coming back at the start of this academic year in September. We found that most the schools are unprepared. Most of the teaching staff is unprepared. The students are unprepared to take on this new set of requirements, one of which is programming.

So our idea is to work with schools to build programming clubs out of hours to give the students who want to learn more and more detail on programming and what you can do with it, an opportunity to do that. So that's the idea in a nutshell.

samzenpus: Why was programming taken out of the curriculum? Was it budget cuts?

Tim: I don't actually know the justification. They basically removed computer science and computer studies, and brought in information communication technology, or, as I call it, secretarial skills. They basically removed proper computer studies, and they were teaching them applications as opposed to computing and programming and operating systems. I'm not aware of the full reasoning or justification. It was something that was done under the Labor government.

A lot of people in the industry have been lobbying the government for many, many years to bring back proper computer science, proper computer studies. And that's now been done. That starts at the start of this academic year.

samzenpus: What ages does your program cover?

Tim: Our aim is to work primarily with 11 to 16 year olds. There's another group in the U.K. called Code Club and they work with primary school children up to the age of 11. So what we're looking to do is work alongside them. Where they've taught the children basic principles, and they played around with software like Scratch and a few of the other applications that let them get an idea of how to build games and basic software, we will then come in pre-GCSE, so around 11 to 13 to start with, and introduce them to actual programming.

So we'll be looking at things like PHP, Python, Ruby, proper actual languages where they'll be writing the code, and then working with the schools and the students through the GCSE years of 13 through 16.

samzenpus: How long does the program last? Is it a whole year? Or is it broken up into semesters?

Tim: We're breaking it up into the semester concept. What we'll do is, there'll be an initial three or four week mini course, which will give them an introduction to programming principles in general. So we'll be covering things like, what are integers, what are strings, what are variables, what are if statements, conditional logic, and things like that; just the basic grounding of it.

And then what we're aiming to do is create a number of optional courses. So they could then do a one semester course in PHP or Perl or Python. So we'll create all of these different, ten week long courses, the students can then opt in to do whatever ones they want to. So we could be in a situation where on half of the club is doing Perl and the other half is doing PHP.

So it's more a case of inspiring the kids to actually program, and then allowing them to pick what languages and what direction they want that programming to go into. We're talking to a group at the moment that may be able to help us develop a programming semester for mobile development for Apple and Android devices. We're also looking at developing a short course for building and looking after Raspberry pi and what software development we can do with one of those.

samzenpus: Who does the work with the kids? Do you try to teach the school staff these skills?

Tim: It's a bit of both. With the first two or three pilot schools that we have, we work with the staff, but we actually attend the club as well. Primarily myself, I attend a lot of the clubs. So that they can actually ask questions which the teachers, in the short term, may not have an answer for. In the longer term, as it grows, obviously that's not going to be sustainable. I can't attend every club across the country.

So the idea is to engage with other small businesses and other software companies around the U.K. and get them to get involved in their local area under the coding in schools banner. And try and get them to attend at least once a month to be there as an expert, as it were, in programming. So that they've always got someone they can go to.

We're also building a set of discussion forums, things like that, online. So if the kids have got questions they can post them into the forum. And hopefully kids in other schools will be able to answer. And we'll start getting them to build their own software community.

We have the open source community that we're involved in. If we can build that sort of community feel across the country, where the kids are actually engaging with each other and potentially working on projects across the schools, that would be the ultimate aim.

samzenpus: One of the things I read on your website is that you focus a lot on how to get girls interested in computer science. Do you specifically target female students?

Tim: We don't specifically target them. What we have is we have a couple of undergraduates who work with us who are female students. They, themselves, have come to us saying that they were never really given an opportunity. They were never pushed and shown what you can do with IT. It's a common problem in the U.K., where the student uptake is probably about 80% male.

So one of the things that we want to do, at least with the staff, is say to them that when people are talking about joining the club, make sure you ask the girls if it's something they want to do. Don't wait for them to come to you, because most of the time they won't. You need to almost engage them first.

So as a club we won't be going directly to the students. The staff will approach the students. But we're just saying to them, make sure that the girls are aware that this is something that they can do. It's not a boring thing. Once they have learned the basics they can build whatever they want to build. There are some very powerful women in IT that, hopefully, we can then use as role models.

samzenpus: Do the kids get school credit for this? Or is it mostly just so that they can learn these skills?

Tim: At the moment it is purely to gain new skills and to gain new understanding and hopefully something of interest to them. One of the longer term aims, it will take a number of years, is we would like to work with people like Computing at School and some of the others, to actually have this become an accredited course. So if they picked, say, three of the different modules, and they got graded on a certain level in those, that would then count towards their final examination. But at the moment it's not in a state to do that.

samzenpus: The world economic state being what it is, a lot of education programs are being cut. Not just in the U.K., but all over. Where do you see programs like yours fitting into the future of education?

Tim: I think they are there to facilitate education. If we can get businesses and other people around the country realizing that the new students that are there are going to be their employees in 10 years' time, then they'll see that as a reason to give back. One of the things that started our thinking was if we don't start teaching the younger people now in 10 years' time there won't be any programmers to do the work.

So hopefully they'll see that as a way of giving back, not only to the industry as a whole, but also to their local communities to help out the schools. There are a lot of parents that we've spoken to, some of which work in IT, that have come along and said, "Well, you know, this is good for my kids. It's good for their school. How can we help?" So we see it working, hopefully, alongside the set educational system. But to give enhancement and opportunities to those that want to take it outside of school.

samzenpus: Have you talked to anyone in the government, about getting these programs in schools? Or do you think you're better served working with the schools directly?

Tim: I think in the short term, we're better served just talking directly to the schools. Once we can build up sufficient momentum, then we actually have something that we can take back to the local educational authorities, or to the government itself, and say, "Look. We've got 20% of all the schools in the U.K. onboard with this. This is something that you should be doing, but we're doing it. Why don't you help us?"

At the moment we don't quite have enough traction to do that. But we are talking and working with some bigger organization like, say, Computing at School, who have four thousand, five hundred members at schools across the country. So we're working with them. It's something they see as a gap. That's why we're working with them, because we fill a niche that they want to fill.

The aim, eventually, is for all of the groups like us, Coding in Schools, Code Academy, Code Club, and all these other different groups to eventually come together and hopefully form a national initiative which will cover all of the age groups, in and out of school, which will give us a very strong position, then, to take to the government and say, "This is something that needs to be done from a governmental level."

samzenpus: Is there anything else you're working on now?

Tim: We've got two or three pilot schools that we're starting now. We've got the first summer schools being planned. We're actually going to do a summer school this year. Because the course is starting in September, the new students are taking it as an option, and the teachers really don't quite know what they are doing yet.

So we put together a week long summer school to work with the two or three pilot schools and the staff to work with the students. Just so they can get an idea of what it is that is coming. So that's quite an important one.

With funding being cut for educational stuff all over the place, one of the things we're trying to do at the moment is to raise funding via either donations or sponsorship. I've talked to Google, and Microsoft, and some of the major players in the market that are software oriented, to see if we can get some donations or sponsorship from them, because it's them that are going to benefit, obviously in the long term. I think that's everything.

theodp writes "Back in the day, getting traction for a new programming language was next to impossible. First, one needed a textbook publishing deal. Then, one needed a critical mass of CS profs across the country to convince their departments that your language was worth teaching at the university level. And after that, one still needed a critical mass of students to agree it was worth spending their time and tuition to learn your language. Which probably meant that one needed a critical mass of corporations to agree they wanted their employees to use your language. It was a tall order that took years if one was lucky, and only some languages — FORTRAN, PL/I, C, Java, and Python come to mind — managed to succeed on all of these fronts. But that was then, this is now. Whip up some online materials, and you can kiss your textbook publishing worries goodbye. Manage to convince just one of the new Super Profs at Udacity or Coursera to teach your programming language, and they can reach 160,000 students with just one free, not-for-credit course. And even if the elite Profs turn up their nose at your creation, upstarts like Khan Academy or Code Academy can also deliver staggering numbers of students in a short time. In theory, widespread adoption of a new programming language could be achieved in weeks instead of years or decades, piquing employers' interest. So, could we be on the verge of a programming language renaissance? Or will the status quo somehow manage to triumph?"

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is running an opinion article that talks about Michael Bloomberg's taking part in CodeAdacemy's CodeYear program, which aims to teach average people to learn enough to work as a Software Developer by year end. I'm trying to not be elitist in judging this article and those involved, but I'm curious as to what /. thinks of this questionable plan."

theodp writes "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to take a coding class in 2012 via Twitter ('My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012! Join me.'). So, is this just a PR coup for Codeacademy, or could EE grad (Johns Hopkins, '64) Bloomberg — who parlayed the $10 million severance he received after being fired as head of systems development at Solomon Brothers into his $19.5 billion Bloomberg L.P. fortune — actually not know how to program? Seems unlikely, but if so, perhaps Bloomberg should just apply to be a Bloomberg Summer 2012 Software Development intern — smart money says he'd get the gig!"