During the second day of my new job at Amazon Web Services as a business development manager for cloud intelligence specializing in artificial intelligence, I discovered that Amazon is a premiere sponsor of The Hour of Code.
From code.org, "Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer
science in schools and increasing participation by women and
underrepresented minorities. Our vision is that every student in every
school has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology,
chemistry or algebra. Code.org provides the leading curriculum for K-12
computer science in the largest school districts in the United States
and Code.org also organizes the annual
Hour of Code
campaign which has engaged 15% of all students in the world. Code.org
is supported by generous donors including Amazon."
The Hour of Code is held during December in celebration of Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper, one of the founders of COBOL programming language and the engineer who coined the term "bug" to mean a computer defect after finding a moth in a mainframe computer.
Despite having missed the initial deadlines with my November start date, my fantastic and dedicated Amazon colleague Jacqueline Olliges
enabled me to order swag including stickers, Amazon Future Engineer certificates of completion for students, and t-shirts for volunteers. The look on students' faces when receiving their stickers and certificates was priceless. They felt so proud having spent the hour learning about coding and imagining a future in engineering.
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| Amazon Future Engineer sticker |
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| Amazon Future Engineer certificate |
On December 11-13 at Philbrick Elementary in Boston, MA, kindergarten through 5th grade students participated in the international movement to teach programming and logic skills to kids. This year, Amazon sponsored an expansion of the Dance Party game, including an expanded hit song list, new characters, and effects.
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| Dance Party from Blain's perspective |
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| Katia Inezian, 4th grade, creating a Dance Party scene |
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| Aiden Alexander, 3rd grade, codes using Dance Party |
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| Chloe Alexander, 3rd grade, finished her Dance Party level |
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| Charis watches 5th grader Blain Assefa's creation |
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| Using the drag and drop Sketch interface to teach programming |
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| 5th graders Blain Assefa and Yasniris |
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| Hazel Hartung, third grade |
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| De'Ana Florence, Philbrick science teacher and Zipei Wei, Amazon volunteer, assist 5th grade students |
Dance on!
Science teacher De'Ana Florence graciously welcomed me and my colleague Zipei into her classroom. We had an excellent, memorable time and can't wait to return for next December's Hour of Code.
