Computer Science Education in Chicagoland

With the ever-growing field of computer science, it is becoming more important to expose children at a younger age to this subject. On average, only a few thousand high school students in Illinois take the AP Computer Science exam out of the hundreds of thousands of high schoolers there are in Illinois. From this, we can conclude that not many middle schoolers are receiving an education or being given an opportunity to gain an interest in CS. This is also due to a lack of exposure in this subject during the childhood years of the students, when they are more impressionable. In light of this, we hope to ignite a passion in impressionable students to learn more about this subject. By 2020, it is estimated that there will be about one million more jobs in the field of computer science and not enough students to fill those job positions. What better way to get these positions filled than by sparking the interests of children in the subject of CS, making them more likely to pursue this subject when getting higher education or even as a job? Our proposed solution is a fun workshop after school that would give students the opportunity to learn coding with a group of peers, rather than having to learn alone. Collaborative learning has been proven to be one of the best methods of learning, and paired with computer science, there is a great potential for the next generation of students