Our Ambassador Supports Computer Science Education Week

For National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang, computer science is a topic near and dear. So much so that he created a series of graphic novels (Secret Coders – a series I quite like) to help introduce computer coding to kids.

As a school librarian, one of my favorite weeks of the year is when students take part in the Hour of Code activities on the Code.org website. If you work in a school and you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.

Here are some computer science DID YOU KNOWs

• The majority of schools don’t teach computer science — 90% of parents want their kids to study computer science, but only 40% of schools teach it.
• 15% of households in the US don’t have a computer. So if the kids in those households overlap with the 60% of schools around the country that don’t teach computer science, they won’t have any access to computers or learn about them in school.
• There are fewer students in the US graduating with a degree in computer science than there were ten years ago — and half as many women.
• Computer science majors can earn 40% more than the average college graduate.
• Computing jobs are the #1 source of new wages in the US; there are more than 500,000 open jobs in computers right now (in every state around the country), and these jobs are projected to grow at twice the rate of all other jobs.
• Computer science only counts towards graduating in 32 states.

And now a word from the Ambassador . . .

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