'Hour of Code' aims to teach 5 million students one hour of computer science this week

Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Both President Obama and House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor are supporting the “Hour of Code” campaign which launched on Monday, an initiative that aims to get 5 millions students in classrooms around the world to learn at least an hour of computer science this week.

In addition to top lawmakers, Hour of Code is backed by celebrities including Shakira, Ashton Kutcher, Angela Bassett, Chris Bosh, Warren Sapp and Dwight Howard.

Apple and Microsoft are also supportive of the effort as are Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Susan Wojcicki.

During the week, every major Apple store in the U.S will host Hour of Code learning events and the country’s 51 Microsoft retail stores will do the same.

The program is being promoted by Code.org.

“Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science education by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. Our vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming. We believe computer science should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra.”

Judging by Google’s homepage and the response on social media, the Hour of Code campaign is off to a strong start.

[CNET] [Code.org]