Do You Know the Code?

America needs more women. Yes, more women to crack the code in the computer world. The amount of women majoring in computer science in colleges are declining. In some schools now teachers are teaching third graders binary code so they will find it as easy to understand the world of computer technology later in their lives too. Right now in the work world the women are gone in computer tech jobs. Why? Why are girls losing interest or are not encouraged to do that kind of career in their working lives? 

There are 4,000 job openings at Microsoft alone. One of Microsoft's pride and joy is their computer science creation of Halo the very popular computer game. There are recruiting efforts to even find any woman who have qualifying computer science degrees. Women interns are even being  offered jobs. The field is so male dominated and competitive that women don't feel comfortable. 

There is a non-profit called CODE.org  that might close the gender tech problem. Its goal is to try to teach code to every student in America from kindergarten to twelfth grade. They have lessons that begin with the simplest problems in commuter science. It looks like games but it is teaching kids to put commands together to build basic computer programming. Sounds cool for any age to me. 

Over time students learn to build Aps, create websites and write computer programs. The same things all those guys do in the tech field.

College and even high school is way too late to get girls interested in the field. Why do middle school girls fall off the cliff in interest in science, technology, engineering and math?  The challenge for CODE.org is finding enough teachers to work with all the kids on the cite. Most college kids in these fields become science or math teachers and not computer science teachers. America can do better.

Now regular elementary school teachers are going to the curriculum on CODE.org and are beginning to teach their kids as they learn coding themselves . The reality is that you don't need to be a computer science expert to be a computer science teacher. Hundreds of middle school teachers and elementary school teachers go to CODE.org weekly long sessions during the summer. Companies donate the funding for the classes. Teachers can start teaching their students after just one day long workshop. 

Let's all bet on board and learn about all that technology that seems to control our lives daily.