A Challenge

I have to write this before I head into work, so unfortunately I have to be brief and this will likely be riddled with grammatical errors.

The Hour of Code starts next week on Monday, and it is without a doubt one of the coolest things I have ever learned about. Just taking a look at the partners page alone is impressive. Everyone who is anyone in both education and technology is involved. You would think based on who is involved (from the video alone) that everyone in the world would know about this.

But for some reason hardly anyone does. Those in the know of course have some idea (i.e. computer science teachers, tech people, etc.), but it seems to me that the general person has no idea this is happening. How can this be?

The Hour of Code started with a goal to introduce 10,000,000 students to computer science. Ambitious? Yes! Realistic though? Of course. Considering the partners involved this was a very reasonable goal. Yet here we are three days before the start, and sadly they are only halfway there. How is this possible?!?!

Well one guess I have is lack of marketing. While the Hour of Code is partnered with such heavy hitters, none of these partners have the Hour of Code mentioned on their main sites. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others have no references to the Hour of Code within easy viewing. All it takes is a simple hyperlink on any of these sites, but none of them have it….. How can we change this…?

I decided to make it my goal for the next week to try and help the Hour of Code reach their goal of 10,000,000 students. Crazy? Of course! But at least I am going to try and do something. There is no reason that in this day and age we, as an online community, can not make this happen. How can we start this?

So this is my challenge to the internet. How can we help the Hour of Code reach there goal before Friday the 13th (something about that day feels lucky to me)? If you happen to stumble upon this blog post, how can you share this challenge with everyone you know? How can we make the Hour of Code go viral?

How……?