Hour of Code at a Local Level

Over 1,000 students from Watsonville to Scotts Valley participated in this year’s Hour of Code event with the help of Code Naturally. During Computer Science Education Week, Code Naturally partnered with Looker and UCSC students to bring the annual Hour of Code event to local Santa Cruz schools. Volunteers attended trainings that prepared them to teach students an introductory lesson on JavaScript. The Code Naturally team organized the logistics to match classrooms with volunteers which helped ease the anxiety teachers may have had surrounding programming.

Code Naturally also created a special version of their app for this Hour of Code event where students were given a platform to code in JavaScript. The volunteers were prepared with a presentation, lessons to teach students and enthusiasm to encourage the students to keep coding. We would like to thank all of our volunteers for being committed to expanding the demographics in Computer Science and to serving our community.

“The hardest thing about first learning to code is not being afraid of not understanding something and having the courage to ask questions.” – Hour of Code Volunteer

Due to the amazing turnout of volunteers and the level of interest of students and teachers, Code Naturally would like to continue offering events like this. Code Naturally is introducing, Code and Create, an initiative to get students exposed to computer science and give teachers the comfort of knowing a trained volunteer would be leading the lessons. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Code and Create event in January 2019.

If you’re a teacher that’d like help bringing programming to their class – click here. 

If you’re a parent looking for Computer Science programs for your child in Santa Cruz – click here.