Code.org is on a mission to get more kids learning about computer science, and so far, the Seattle-based non-profit seems to be making legitimate progress.
Hadi Partovi, a longtime Seattle entrepreneur who founded Code.org this past January with his brother, Ali, wrote up a 2013 recap today that outlined the organization’s accomplishments thus far.
One particular stat was impressive: In just one month after Code.org launched its free 20-hour intro to computer science course last month, 10,000 teachers have signed up for program — that’s about 500,000 new students now learning how to develop.
Partovi estimates that before Dec. 9, there were 13,000 teachers in the U.S. helping students learn about computer science. That means Code.org has technically almost doubled the amount of computer science learning in the country.
“I don’t think any course has ever spread through school systems at anywhere near this pace,” Partovi told GeekWire.
While he didn’t have the exact data, Partovi estimates that the 20-hour course “has spread 100 times faster than any course in the history of K-12 education.”
That’s not all Code.org is doing to encourage coding education. The organization also recently reached 10 million students last month — half of them girls — with its “Hour of Code” movement that encouraged kids to spend one hour learning how to code.
Code.org has ambitious goals for 2014: Reach 100 million more students in 2014, have 100,000 teachers host an online course, and push 100 districts in the U.S. to implement computer science courses in 1,000 high schools.
