This week is Computer Science Education Week. During the week, students around the world will be taking part in an "Hour of Code" and learning a little about programming computers. This year, there will be more than 200.000 events in over 180 countries.
The U.S. Congress first created Computer Science Education Week in 2009 to remember Grace Hopper, one of the women who played an important part in the early days of computers.
Hadi Partovi came up with the idea of the Hour of Code. He thinks coding is an important skill and that it's important for schools to teach computer science. He started the Hour of Code in 2013 because he was worried that computer science was not a big part of what schools taught in most states.
To spread his idea, he got the help from many famous people. Some were famous for working with computers, like Bill Gates. Others were famous in other areas. Mr. Partovi got a lot of money for his idea from big companies like Facebook. Google, and Microsoft.
Students who take part in the Hour of Code complete a short coding challenge that is broken down into small, simple steps. The challenge is supposed to take about an hour in all.
To raise the interest of students, the challenges are often tied in with popular movies or games. For example, challenges have been built around Angry Birds. Mine Craft. Frozen. and Star Wars—One test of the program's success is whether students keep going once the time is up. It turns out that many of them do. Last year, teachers reported that 92% of their students coded for more than an hour.
