Dr. Veerasamy talks with the Dallas Morning News and the Associated Press about Coding for Kids
Dallas Morning News — When the last bell rings through the halls of Herfurth Elementary School, 10-year-old Savannah Schwarz races to the computer lab. She posts up outside the door in anticipation of coding club.
The after-school sessions were launched at Garland ISD schools in the fall. The clubs are run in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas, which provides graduate students who lead the sessions, said program leader Jey Veerasamy, UT Dallas professor and director of the Center for Computer Science Education & Outreach (CCSEO). The clubs introduce students to a variety of public tools that are available online.
“We let them play and learn,” Veerasamy said. “We’re not really going through a formal lecture.”
To continue reading Liz Farmer’s article featuring Dr. Jey Veerasamy, Director of the Center for Computer Science Education and Outreach (CCSEO), click here.
Click here to read about this summers UT Dallas Coding Camps.
Photo by MIKE STONE/special contributor
NEW YORK (Associated Press) — Want even your younger kids to join the tech revolution by learning to code? Maybe you should get them a robot — or at least a video game.
That’s the aim of entrepreneurs behind new coding toys for kids as young as 6. They’re spurred by a desire to get children interested in computer science well before their opinions about what’s cool and what’s not start to gel, in effect hoping to turn young boys and girls — especially girls — into tomorrow’s geeks.
“You really want kids to learn these building blocks as young as possible and then build on them,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview at a recent coding workshop for third-graders in New York. “I don’t think you can start this too young.”
Click here to see the comments of Dr. Jey Veerasamy, Director of the Center for CS Education and Outreach, and to continue reading the rest of the article written by BREE FOWLER on the Associated Press’s website. You may also view the article on the New York Times website. The story has been picked up by several other newspapers including the Raleigh Sun Times, Seattle Times, and the Albuquerque Journal.
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The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 1,600 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,100 master’s students, 160 PhD students, and 80 faculty members, as of Fall 2015. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.