Here is the only bit in the campaign text about why this is so important: "Today, it's equally fundamental to learn to "dissect an app," or how the Internet works. Every young person deserves basic knowledge of how the world works around them and how to build technology that’s changing the world."
So, since the Hour of Code is teaching neither "how to dissect an app" or "how the internet works" (both of which are fairly difficult topics, IMO), the goal is, in a word, exposure. Hoping that by exposing 100M students to the most trivial of programming concepts, they will be thirsty for more.
Flipping through some of the offerings (http://studio.code.org/), all of which double as game advertisements, I'm not convinced this accomplishes even that. I want know why exposure needs to take the form of cartoons and games. Yes, children and teens will be more engaged if it reminds them of games, but that doesn't demonstrate results. My instinct about this comes from my own exposure to math; I remember hating the cute pictures and the word problems.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 13.4 ms ] threadSo, since the Hour of Code is teaching neither "how to dissect an app" or "how the internet works" (both of which are fairly difficult topics, IMO), the goal is, in a word, exposure. Hoping that by exposing 100M students to the most trivial of programming concepts, they will be thirsty for more.
Flipping through some of the offerings (http://studio.code.org/), all of which double as game advertisements, I'm not convinced this accomplishes even that. I want know why exposure needs to take the form of cartoons and games. Yes, children and teens will be more engaged if it reminds them of games, but that doesn't demonstrate results. My instinct about this comes from my own exposure to math; I remember hating the cute pictures and the word problems.