(On the Hour of Code site, students, teachers, and families can explore programming tutorials and activities from and partners.) CODEGIRL the Movie To find out more about the Hour of Code,, and how you can get involved, visit. With a trio of Star Wars, Frozen, and Minecraft computer programming tutorials, kids may find that computer programming is lots of fun and worthy of more than an hour's attention! The other highlighted tutorial is Minecraft-themed, reinforcing the fact that hooking learning experiences to popular culture is one way to gain student interest. According to, the Frozen tutorial has been completed more than 13 million times since it launched last December. One of the other spotlighted tutorials on the Hour of Code site features Anna and Elsa from the popular Disney film Frozen. Putting characters like Princess Leia center stage creates an engaging and welcoming learning environment for both girls and boys. According to, in the tutorial, "participants will join forces with Rey to guide BB-8 through a space mission, then team up with Princess Leia to build their own game featuring R2-D2 or C-3PO." Depending on age and experience, students can do a simplified guided programming activity using 's drag-and-drop coding environment or they can do a more advanced version of the tutorial combining the block-oriented programming with JavaScript. The video accompanying the Star Wars coding activity features Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy talking about the role of computer programming in filmmaking and Rachel Rose, a Senior R&D engineer working on Star Wars: The Force Awakens introducing the activity. Familiar characters like Princess Leia, C-3PO and R2-D2 make an appearance, as do Rey and BB-8, characters in the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie.
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In preparation for this year's Hour of Code week, launched a new featured Hour of Code tutorial that centers around Star Wars. While Hour of Code aims to inspire as many students as possible to do an activity that helps demystify computer programming,, the parent organization, has clearly worked hard to make Hour of Code girl friendly. In an hour, a student's view of coding can be completely transformed.
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All it takes is an hour to work a computer coding experience into the school day (or afterschool program or even at home).
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This week, December 7-13, teachers and families around the world are encouraged to join in celebration of Computer Science Education Week and give students the chance to try computer programming with an activity that will take about an hour. An Hour of Code project makes introducing students to computer programming easy and fun.