By Mira Schwirtz

Ali Partovi, tech entrepreneur and co-founder of the computer science education initiative Code.org, spoke Feb. 25 at the Marin County Office of Education promoting a national campaign to make computer science part of a standard U.S. education. Afterwards he joined MVGATE in presenting an “Hour of Code Night” program for parents and students.

Calling computer science as important a subject as algebra or the physical sciences in teaching fundamental reasoning and logic skills, Partovi said Hour of Code’s kid-friendly curriculum is meant to spur interest in programming and help prepare American students for future tech jobs.

“There are more jobs in computer programming than there are people to fill them,” Partovi said during his presentation to Marin Country teachers, administrators, and parents. “That’s why the tech industry has to invite immigrants to fill them. India and China have already made computer science a core subject in their schools.”

Partovi also described his childhood in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, when he and his twin brother spent hours programming their computer as a means of escape from the violence around them. Hour of Code curriculum, he explained, is designed to give students a taste of coding without the needless frustration he experienced hunting out typos in a dense programming script. “I wish I had had the Hour of Code when I was learning,” Partovi said.

Since its launch in 2013, Hour of Code’s web-based application using puzzles to teach basic programming concepts has been used by more than 100 million people. Currently 25 states, including California, don’t allow students to count computer science classes toward their high school graduation requirements.

After his talk, Partovi took the stage to help introduce MVGATE’s Hour of Code Night. The program lets children and their parents do their first hour of computer coding together – all via Code.org’s Hour of Code puzzles. “It was fantastic to have Ali help lead the program,” said John Pearce, co-founder of MVGATE. “We’ve used Code.org’s terrific online materials to bring Hour of Code Night to more than 2,000 kids and parents at schools across Marin.”

In addition to Hour of Code Nights, the Mill Valley-based nonprofit provides on-campus, afterschool classes to hundreds of K-5 kids, in three Marin County communities, using online curriculum from Code.org, MIT, Google, and other sources.