[CoLoCo] Hour of Code events in Colorado next week? Available computer labs?

[Neal McBurnett]

Is anyone in the local Ubuntu and free software community planning to sponsor any Hour of Code events?

The event has gotten enormous in just one year - they are shooting to reach 100 million students this year.  That will take help from everyone who can spare it.  Apple put it on their home page, and is offering sessions in all their stores.  Google and Facebook have promoted it along with a slew of others.

This seems like a great opportunity for open source / free software folks to connect with our future developers and supporters, to say nothing of helping teach kids fundamental lessons about logic, algorithms and how technology works.  And Ubuntu Colorado has a great track record of helping Colorado out with education.

First learn about it here:

 Join the largest learning event in history, Dec 8-14, 2014
  http://hourofcode.com/us

There are a bunch of schools offering sessions for their own students, but for e.g. high school students whose schools aren't participating, or who looking to go further via an "out of class" session, I only see one event in all of the front range (Rangeview High School, 17599 East Iliff Aurora).  So if we offer some, I bet kids would come.

Does anyone have computer labs that we could use?
There is a wide variety of lessons available in a variety of languages.  They're pushing stuff like Squeak that is graphical so there aren't confusing syntax issues, and Javascript since it is available in essentially every device on the Internet.  Kids can use tablets and phones as well as computers, or even do fun lessons without computers at all.

There are lots more ways for us to get involved here:

 How to help | Code.org
  http://code.org/help

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/