Teach a Child to Code for a More Successful Future

According to a recent Forbes article, "Software developer jobs are expected to rise 24% between 2016-2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We need more people to design, think and create effective and practical solutions to real-world problems." We certainly do—as of 2016, the U.S. had roughly 3 million more STEM jobs available than it had skilled workers to fill them.

Another article that ran in The Atlantic in 2015 stresses the importance of teaching students computer science and coding before they reach college. According to Tom Cordina, the assistant dean at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science:"When younger kids learn computer science, they learn that it’s not just a confusing, endless string of letters and numbers—but a tool to build apps, or create artwork, or test hypotheses. It’s not as hard for them to transform their thought processes as it is for older students. Breaking down problems into bite-sized chunks and using code to solve them becomes normal. Giving more children this training could increase the number of people interested in the field and help fill the jobs gap."

We're so passionate about this that we brought Globaloria into the Carnegie Learning family last year. Globaloria provides teachers — even teachers who've never taught coding and computing — access to hands-on training courses and tools to help them teach students how to design and code their own computer games. Beeville ISD saw exciting results when offering the Globaloria curriculum to students in their district. “Our reading grades doubled at kindergarten, our first-grade reading scores increased by 20 points, and our second-grade reading scores increased by 30 points,” Marc Puig, Beeville ISD Superintendent, said. “This is the application of critical thinking.”