Mark your calendars, educators! It's almost time for the biggest celebration of computer science in education: CSEdWeek 2024 is upon us, happening from December 9th to 15th. Get ready for a week packed with coding challenges, exciting activities, and opportunities to inspire your students and advocate for computer science education in your classroom, school, and community. Let's dive into the exciting opportunities this week offers...
CSEdWeek Dec 9-15
CSEdWeek, or Computer Science Education Week, on December 9-15, 2024, is a nationwide celebration of computer science. It's a week filled with coding challenges, workshops, and other fun activities designed to inspire students of all ages to explore the exciting world of computer science. From building video games to creating websites, there's something for everyone to enjoy. The main goal of the week is to get your class, school, or community involved in computer science.
The CSEdWeek team offers a variety of support and resources for teaching, advocating, and connecting with CS. 
On the top of the list of these resources is the CS Heroes Poster. Each year, they find amazing students, educators, and partners in the field to showcase on posters that you can print and share with your community. These make for a great lesson or unit starter, discussing with students what computer science can look like in a variety of different contexts. They are also something that is great to hang in the hallway or on bulletin boards.
CSEdWeek also offers a template and lesson material to create your own CS Hero Posters! This year, CSEdWeek and CSTA will be calling for your posters to be shared on social media on December 10th. Here is a link to CS Hero Poster with a Google Slide Template. We’ve also created a simple Canva Template in case that is a platform you use with your students.
Opportunities with CSTA
CSEdWeek is run in conjunction with CSTA, or the Computer Science Teachers Association. This organization calls themselves the largest CS Department in the world. This is your go-to resource for all things computer science education. It's like a club for educators who love coding and want to share their passion with students and others. CSTA offers professional development, curriculum resources, and a supportive community of like-minded educators.
CSTA will be hosting some special events for CSEdWeek. It all starts with a Kickoff Meeting on November 21st where they will share about the week and provide free resources for educators. During the week of Dec 9-15th, they will host a Celebration and various other webinars. I highly recommend you check out CSTA and their CSEdWeek events!
FREE Student Shows
CodeJoy is joining in on the fun! We want to help teachers and students celebrate CS so we have planned to support your classrooms with 15 Free Student Shows! That’s right, from Dec 6-13 we will have about 3 shows per day at a variety of times to support time zones across the country. Each of our shows can have up to 400 participants, which means we hope to support up to 6000 students for CSEdWeek!
We will also be showcasing more than one show that week. At the beginning of the week, join Kelsey, Matt the Robot, and Elby for Robot Mini Golf. Elby really wants to win a prize at the mini golf course, but all the obstacles are completely unplayable! Your students write new codes and then get to put-put live with Elby from their classroom. At the end of the week, we will switch our set over to Robot Aerobics. Let’s get the robots (and students) of the world dancing! Your students program our robot dancers LIVE! That means you can sign up for more than one different show in one week.
To sign up for a free show, go to the EVENTS page on our website. Click on the CodeJoy Sponsored Shows Image. Then, select your time and date. You’ll share how many students you plan to bring and a special link with instructions will be sent to the email you register with.
Be sure to keep an eye out for updates to our Student Show companion projects as well. We will be updating and sharing new, easy to teach lessons you can use with your students. Both Robot Mini Golf and Robot Aerobics will have updated downloadable lesson plans with easy building instructions and simple code for you and your classroom.
History of CS Ed Week
CSEdWeek was first launched by ACM, the Association of Computing Machinery, on December 6–12, 2009. Each year, during CSEdWeek, we celebrate Grace Hopper’s birthday, who was born on December 9, 1906. Grace Hopper was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and high-ranking officer in the U.S. Navy. She helped create the first commercial electronic computer. In 2013, Code.org launched their Hour of Code project, which has engaged 15 million students and over 35,000 events across 167 countries since then. Today, we continue to celebrate many of these people, organizations and projects.
Code.org Hour of Code
If you’re looking for just the right activity to try with your class or your whole school, the Hour of Code is the right fit! This program by Code.org, provides a huge bank of simple, step-by-step, coding activities that are meant to last one hour or less. In my schools, this has been a particularly great resource for educators who are not familiar with coding or CS. Code.org provides guides, resources, and a platform to share your event. However, I would highly recommend, if you are trying to get your whole school involved, pick your favorite Hour of Code Activities and share those directly with teachers and students. The Dance Party activities are always a hit!
More Resources for CSEdWeek
Looking for some more resources and ideas? Here we’ve found some ideas that you’re welcome to use as inspiration:
- https://padlet.com/justinechavezcrespin/2024-csedweek-chapter-y5bfrhbxum1yk07m
- https://sites.google.com/sfusd.edu/cs-ed-week2020/activities
- https://eventsonair.withgoogle.com/events/cs-edu-week-2023
Some CSEdWeek ideas from educators:
- Host a “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” Day for your Esports Club - Invite more girls to your esports team by making some space for them to play the kinds of games they are interested in.
- Play a story based game with your Esports Club - Games like Dot’s Home are equity based games that can get people thinking and interacting with important topics in new ways.
- Try Bots & Buddys at your schools - Invite older students to share their robotics with younger students. For example, you can teach your 5th grade how to use the Finch Robot and then have them do an activity with the 2nd graders.
- Share Hour of Code with your community - Team up with your public library or community center and host an Hour of Code for all ages!
- CS December - December can be a tough month for classrooms. I would often refer to December as the “pit of engagement.” With winter break and various holidays on the horizon, students have a hard time diving deep into learning. Use CS to your advantage this month and do CS based activities all month. I would use this month to introduce Scratch to second graders, dive into physical computing with third and fourth graders, and get fifth grade started on text based code. With CS at my side, December turned into my most engaged month!
https://x.com/McMenemyTweets/status/1856327915102666784
https://x.com/OctoStudioApp/status/1856384095598625110
https://x.com/CodingWCulture/status/1856015761820586485
Watch social media to see what your favorite edtech companies are doing to celebrate and support you. You can even reach out and ask, “What are you doing for #CSEdWeek?” Then, be sure to share your own celebrations with the tag #CSEdWeek!