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Feature Story | Mathematics and Computer Science

One Hour of Code, A Lifetime of Interest

Argonne National Laboratory’s Educational Programs, in partnership with the Computer Science Education Working Group, recently participated in the Hour of Code initiative December 7-12.

The Hour of Code was organized in 2013 by Code​.org in conjunction with Computer Science Education Week. Originally a grassroots effort to raise awareness about the importance of computer science education, the Hour of Code has become a global activity, with almost 200,000 events around the world.

This was Argonne’s first year participating in the Hour of Code celebration, and it proved a big success. A total of 32 schools participated, with large support from divisions labwide. We certainly plan to participate next year,” said Meredith Bruozas, manager of Educational Programs and Outreach at Argonne.

MCS played a major role in Argonne’s Hour of Code activities. More than two dozen of the division’s graduate students, computational scientists, software developers, computer scientists, and postdoctoral appointees visited schools in Chicago and the suburbs, giving an overview of research at Argonne, presenting talks and demos of their work, and conducting hands-on activities with students and teachers. For example, MCS staff helped a high school class through some Tynker exercises; showed a junior high school class how code is responsible for day-to-day activities such as text messaging; demonstrated to an elementary school class how loops are in programming and in climate models; and used shadow puppets to explain phase retrieval to preschool and kindergarten children.