CodeMontana encourages high school students to learn computer programming
February 27, 2014
CodeMontana offers a statewide program that encourages Montana high school students to learn computer programming. Founders of the program say there are many high-tech jobs in Montana that go unfilled because there aren’t enough people with the skills to fill those jobs, so they are trying to create a groundswell of statewide momentum to prepare Montana young people to obtain the skills to be able to move into those kinds of high-paying technical jobs.
The CodeMontana.org founders launched a statewide program in September 2013 with its one year goal of 1,000 students. In just five months they had 1,050 students already participating. CodeMontana has set a new and more ambitious goal of 5,000 Montana high school students participating in CodeMontana.org by the spring of 2015.
CodeMontana is a free program for all Montana high school students. Participants access a self-paced online curriculum developed by two Stanford computer science graduates that teaches them the basics of software development. Montana Programmers (www.montanaprogrammers.org) and the Montana Web Developers and Designers (http://www.mtwda.org) volunteer their time to coach CodeMontana participants. They have graded over 30,000 assignments completed so far by students. These organizations consist of hundreds of computer programmers and web developers statewide that make their living doing software development. The students compete for $10,000 of prizes while learning how to program.
High school teachers and administrators across the state have encouraged their students to participate in CodeMontana.org and in some cases incorporated the curriculum into their classrooms. In Eureka, CodeMontana.org was introduced to about 450 middle school and high school students via a general assembly.
Interested students who want more information or to sign up can go to the www.CodeMontana.org web site. Each student will have unlimited access to the on-line curriculum for 90 days after sign-up. Prizes will be awarded monthly based on progress with the curriculum.
|
