On Tuesday, June 9, 2015, the San Francisco Board of Education unanimously voted to expand computer science education to all grade levels. This new initiative will be funded by the Salesforce Foundation, the non-profit wing of Salesforce, a cloud computing company.
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Presently, computer science is not a widely-taught subject in the San Francisco Unified School District. In the Spring 2014 semester, only a few hundred students took the AP computer science exam. The school district wants to increase these numbers, and expand computer science across all grade levels, because the subject is receiving high demand from the global tech industry.
Board of Education President Emily Murase said in a statement about the decision:
“Information technology is now the fastest growing job sector in San Francisco, but too few students currently have access to learn the Computer Science skills that are crucial for such careers. We are proud to be at the forefront of creating a curriculum that will build on the knowledge and skills students will need starting as early as preschool.”
Even preschoolers will get computer science lessons. These children will “most likely” build robots with blocks, get an introduction to the “concepts of procedural thinking, cause and effect, decomposition of complex tasks, pattern recognition as well as the ability to notice similarities or common differences, abstraction and algorithm design and the ability to develop a step-by-step strategy for solving a problem.”
The move to expand computer science education in San Francisco could have an impact on the future FinTech industry, as students receiving these lessons may decide to pursue degrees in computer science or related fields and then enter the FinTech sector. This has potential ramifications for Bitcoin; if more people receive educations in computer science, there will undoubtedly be an increase of interest in Bitcoin and blockchain technologies, which have the potential to revolutionize the finance industry.
What do you think about San Francisco’s move to expand computer science education? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: ars technica
Images: SanFranciscoTravel, Winston-Salem State University Department of Computer Science
