Arizona Bill Would Make Students In Grades 4-12 Participate Once In An Hour of Code (azpbs.org)

theodp writes: Christopher Silavong of Cronkite News reports: "A bill, introduced by [Arizona State] Sen. John Kavanagh [R-Fountain Hills] would mandate that public and charter schools provide one hour of coding instruction once between grades 4 to 12. Kavanagh said it's critical for students to learn the language -- even if it's only one session -- so they can better compete for jobs in today's world. However, some legislators don't believe a state mandate is the right approach. Senate Bill 1136 has passed the Senate, and it's headed to the House of Representatives. Kavanagh said he was skeptical about coding and its role in the future. But he changed his mind after learning that major technology companies were having trouble finding domestic coders and talking with his son, who works at a tech company." According to the Bill, the instruction can "be offered by either a nationally recognized nonprofit organization [an accompanying Fact Sheet mentions tech-backed Code.org] that is devoted to expanding access to computer science or by an entity with expertise in providing instruction to pupils on interactive computer instruction that is aligned to the academic standards."

Comments

tick tock

[bugs2squash]

Assuming the teacher knows what they are doing, that scratch is up and running on machines before the class starts, that there is enough equipment for 1 PC/ipad per student, that there are a few adult volunteers to help kickstart the kids. Then they can learn something worthwhile in that hour.

They will learn if they like doing this kind of thing and they will learn that it is easy and they will learn that they can download scratch to their PC at home or their school ipad and play around with it on their own.

I know it works because I have led a one-off class like that at an elementary school (after hours) and a few of the kids came up to me weeks later and said that they had got into programming scratch because of it and they entered scratch projects at the science fair