Nearly 200 Pa. schools are participating in Computer Science Education Week

All 135 middle school students at Center City’s Friends Select School will do one hour of computer programming this week.

The students are taking part in an international initiative called Computer Science Education Week designed to expose students to coding. Nearly five million students from 168 countries have signed up to do one hour of code this week, including nearly 200 schools in Pennsylvania.

Here’s what some local organizations are doing:

• The city’s Director of Civic Technology Tim Wisniewski visited Friends Select, a private school near the Ben Franklin Parkway, and helped students with their hour-long coding session.
• Five hundred students at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science will do one hour of code this week. The North Philly magnet school is also hosting a day-long hackathon this week.
• The Urban Technology Project’s Digital Service Fellows, who are trained as School District technology apprentices, are helping participating District schools with their hour of code, said project coordinator Jacob Feinberg. The fellows are also traveling to Harrisburg today to help spread the word about Computer Science Education Week and will tour Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.
• Email marketing company AWeber is bringing six of its employees to New Hope-Solebury High School today to show off how computer science can control objects. “One of our programmers has designed a model door connected to a number of sensors and a computer,” a spokeswoman said. “Through those sensors he’ll be able to use code to have the opening and closing of the door trigger other actions such as sending an email and setting off a mini-alarm.”
• Other participating Philly schools include: South Philly’s A.S. Jenks, Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, East Germantown’s Hill-Freeman World Academy and Center City South’s World Communications Charter School.