December 3-9 is the week of “Hour
of Code.” It takes place during Computer Science Education Week – a week
held in recognition of the birthday of Grace Hopper (a pioneer in
computing!)
Teachers/Parents: You don’t have to be an expert to allow your child opportunity to code. The best part about coding is the embedded learning cycle of trial->error->analyze & adjust->try again! There are many resources that make it
simple for students to try coding (including some unplugged opportunities.)
Check them out below!
Websites & Online Resources
- Hour of Code: https://hourofcode.com/us
- Code.org: https://code.org/
- Code with Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/
- Computer Science Education Week: https://csedweek.org/educate/hoc
- Check out these “unplugged” coding activities: https://code.org/curriculum/unplugged
Hour of Code intro videos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQilo5ecSX4
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip051U7Rvds&list=PLzdnOPI1iJNcadqJAZnbDYShie4gLZQQJ
- "Code Stars" short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU1xS07N-FA
Historical Figures in Coding
- Dr. Grace Hopper: http://www.women-inventors.com/Dr-Grace-Murray-Hopper.asp
- Hidden Figures – If you didn’t get a chance to use
our October Book of the Month – Hour of Code is a great time to read and discuss
it! Every school has a copy of this book! http://www.hiddenfigures.com/
- Ada Lovelace – World’s First Computer Programmer (and
½ of the namesake of the character Ada Twist, Scientist!) – also the
daughter of Poet Lord Byron! https://kids.kiddle.co/Ada_Lovelace
- Charles Babbage (worked with Ada!): https://kids.kiddle.co/Charles_Babbage
- Seymore Papert (creator of Lego Mindstorms
Kits!): http://www.papert.org/
Apple Stores have events to celebrate Hour of Code – check
them out here: https://www.apple.com/today/collection/hourofcode/
Don’t worry – if the timing doesn’t work for you next week –
most of these resources are free and are available all the time… so hold your
“Hour of Code” anytime! Happy Programming!
~Heather
------------------------------------------------------
Heather Leonard
STEM Curriculum Coordinator, Reading Public Schools
STEM Curriculum Coordinator, Reading Public Schools
Phone: 781-670-2256
Computer Science Timeline
§ 1843 – Mathematician Ada Lovelace writes
about programming while she works with Charles Baggage, who creates the first
plans for a mechanical computer. Lovelace writes an algorithm, or program, that
could be used on this computer, which is why many consider her the first computer programmer.
§ 1938 – Konrad Zuse completes the design and
build of the Z1, the first freely programmable computer. It is a complex
mechanical calculator that uses binary code, or “ones and zeros.”
§ 1945 – John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
complete the Electronic Numerical Integrator
Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), the first electronic computer. This
makes it much faster than previous mechanical machines. Used by the U.S.
Military to do ballistics calculations, the ENIAC weighs 30 tons and fills an
entire 1,800 square foot room. Six women become the ENIAC’s main programmers:
Jean Jennings Bartik, Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas,
and Ruth Lichterman.
§ 1959 – COBOL, the first programming language
to use words instead of numbers, is developed based on the work of Grace
Hopper, a math professor and Navy rear admiral.
§ 1963 – Douglas Engelbert invents the computer mouse. The
device is nicknamed a “mouse” because it resembles the rodent, and the term
seems to stick. At Stanford Research Institute, he helped to lay the foundation
for the graphical user interface (GUI), which allows users to operate the
computer visually on a screen using icons and a pointing device.
§ 1969 – Computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider’s work greatly
influences the development of the modern Internet. An Internet
pioneer, he develops the ARPANET, the direct predecessor of the Internet, named
after the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
He and his team exchange computer communications between universities.
§ 1969 – Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug
McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna begin working on a multiuser operating system at
AT&T’s Bell Labs. The system will become known as UNIX.
§ 1970 – The programming language SQL, which
stands for “Structured Query Language,” begins development at IBM.
§ 1973 – The Xerox Alto is released, becoming
one of the first personal computers for individual use. It is also the first computer with a desktop
monitor and GUI. Before GUIs, computers were operated with only a
keyboard. The Xerox Alto offered the capability to program in four different
languages.
§ 1973 – The fourth edition of UNIX is
rewritten in C programming language. This allows the operating system to be
moved to different computers, which will have a huge impact on the development
of later systems.
§ 1975 – Programmers Bill Gates and Paul Allen
partner up to found a startup company called Microsoft. Their goal is to get “a
computer on every desktop and in every home.”
§ 1976 – Programmers Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak found Apple Computer Company.
§ 1977 – Apple Computer releases the first
personal computer with color graphics, the Apple II.
§ 1980 – Tim Paterson leads the development of
86-DOS (“Disk Operating System”), the first in a series of early operating
systems, at Seattle Computer Products.
§ 1981 – An early version of MS-DOS,
Microsoft’s first computer operating system, is developed by Microsoft to run
on IBM computers.
§ 1981 – The IBM personal computer debuts,
transforming the market with its affordable price and combination of personal
and business capabilities.
§ 1983 – The C++ programming language is
developed by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup.
§ 1983 – The first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, is
released. It has a basic operating system that stores contacts, marking the
beginning of mobile application development.
§ 1984 – Apple releases its first Macintosh
personal computer.
§ 1985 – Microsoft releases its new operating
system Windows 1.0, which can be operated using a mouse.
§ 1989 – The World Wide Web (WWW) is created
by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, a center for scientific research.
It is intended to internationally share information between scientists. In the
following year, Berners-Lee also establishes the web’s essential components:
hypertext markup language (HTML) for creating web documents, the uniform
resource locator (URL) for designating websites, and hypertext transfer
protocol (HTTP) for sending and retrieving information on the web.
§ 1991 – Dutch programmer Guido van Russum creates
the Python programming language, which focuses on condensing and simplifying
code.
§ 1991 – Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer
science student, releases Linux kernel. It evolves into Linux, a hugely popular
operating system that is open source, which means it is free and can be
customized by users.
§ 1993 – CERN’s World Wide Web code is
released to the public, allowing anyone to use and customize it. It quickly
becomes a universal web service used on the Internet.
§ 1995 – Java programming is created by James
Gosling. It’s designed to run on most platforms.
§ 1995 – Microsoft releases Windows 95. At the
time of release, the majority of computers throughout the world run a Microsoft
operating system.
§ 1999 – At this point, most dates in code are
formatted as “MM/DD/YY,” with the computer recognizing that there is a “19”
before the year digits. As a result, everyone fears that computers will fail to
shift from 1999 to 2000 and cause major problems. Billions of dollars are spent on fixing the code of the Y2K bug
before the clock changes.
§ 2000 – Danish software engineer Anders
Hejlsberg develops C#, a simple general-purpose programming language.
§ 2002 – Visual Basic .NET, a high-level
programming language, is created by Microsoft.
§ 2009 – The National Cybersecurity and
Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) is founded to protect
institutions and infrastructures from malicious cyberthreats.
§ 2013 – The nonprofit Code.org is launched to
promote computer programming education in schools.
