Tarkington Receives Funding to Develop Youth Coding Programs

Tarkington Receives Funding to Develop Youth Coding Programs

We are excited to announce today that Mrs. Rivers, Information Literacy and Enrichment Teacher and the Tarkington LMC have received $500 from the American Library Association (ALA) to help plan and implement coding activities during Computer Science Education (CS Ed) Week 2018 (December 3-9) and beyond. Tarkington is one of 250 school and public libraries around the country to receive this microfunding from Libraries Ready to Code, an initiative of the American Library Association sponsored by Google.

Mrs. Rivers said, “A school goal as well as PSI (Problem Solving Investigations enrichment services) goal has focused on making more use of our computer lab space. PSI students have been working on transforming the computer lab into an “Innovation Station” and were in need of funding to make it a reality. We are fortunate to have received this grant from Google and the ALA for $500 to purchase items that support computer science initiatives to be used during CS Ed Week and throughout the entire school year.”

“Libraries are the cornerstones of our communities,” said Google program manager Nicky Rigg. “We are proud to include Tarkington in our CS Ed Week activities this year. We hope these libraries will join the growing number of libraries excited to offer CS programs that help youth create, problem solve and develop the confidence and skills to succeed in their future careers.”

“ALA is pleased to provide microfunding to Tarkington and other Ready to Code libraries,” said ALA President Loida Garcia-Febo. “We hope this microfunding will not only generate enthusiasm for CS Ed Week, but spark year-round programming to develop critical thinking and digital skills youth can draw on over a lifetime.”

The 250 libraries selected for CS Ed Week funding will each host activities based on Google’s free CS First curriculum, which uses video-based instruction to introduce CS to kids through block-based coding. Libraries will pursue projects that reflect Ready to Code themes critical for advancing youth learning, especially for building computational thinking literacies. The Ready to Code team estimates that the CS Ed Week funding will support more than 60,000 youth all around the country taking part in coding activities throughout the week.