CodeMontana builds high-tech education
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CodeMontana.org announced Feb. 17 that the statewide program launched in September 2013 has surpassed its one-year goal of 1,000 students in just five months with 1,050 students already participating.
CodeMontana is a free program for all Montana high school students. Participants access an engaging, self-paced online curriculum developed by two Stanford computer science graduates that teaches them the basics of software development. The students compete for $10,000 in prizes while learning how to program.
Interested students should sign up at the www.CodeMontana.org web site. Each student will have unlimited access to the online curriculum for 90 days after sign-up. Prizes will be awarded monthly based on progress with the curriculum.
The program is designed to encourage Montana high school students to learn computer programming. In addition it has created a groundswell of statewide momentum to prepare Montana young people for high-paying jobs here in the state.
Montana Programmers (www.montanaprogrammers.org) and the Montana Web Developers and Designers (http://www.mtwda.org/) continue to volunteer their time to coach CodeMontana participants and have graded over 30,000 assignments completed by students so far. These self-organized and totally bootstrapped grassroots organizations consist of hundreds of computer programmers and web developers statewide that make their living doing software development.
CodeMontana.org co- founders Rob Inzarry and Greg Granforte have set a new and more ambitious goal of 5,000 Montana high school students participating in CodeMontana.org by the spring of 2015.
More than 400 high-paying high-tech jobs are created each year in Montana with starting salaries of $45,000 to $85,000, but many of these jobs are left unfilled because not enough Montana young people are pursuing computer science.
Compounding the problem, nine out of 10 high schools nationally — and most high schools in Montana — do not even offer computer-programming classes.
Montana Tech is now offering $160,000 in scholarships for Montana students who complete CodeMontana.org to pursue computer science degrees. http://cs.mtech.edu/codemt
The University of Montana recently raised over $90,000 in scholarships for Montana students wishing to study computer science. http://www.cs.umt.edu/scholarships/
Montana State University Computer Science Department representatives are visiting 50 Montana high schools this year with an engaging robotics program to interest kids in pursuing computer science degrees in college and for students to participate in CodeMontana. To learn more or to sign up visit www.CodeMontana.org.
