Digital natives, or students who grew up with technology, are getting a head start in Idaho to bring their experience to the workforce.
Idaho is the second state in the U.S. to implement a computer science curriculum statewide from Code.org. The curriculum offers day by day lesson plans and 9 instruction policies for classrooms K through 12. Computer science teacher Lindsay Davis teaches the curriculum to her students and other educators around Idaho.
“Computer science has actually been called the fourth literacy like reading, writing, arithmetic and then algorithms. The 4 R's, just because we all do use technology pretty much every day in our lives," said Davis.
The need for STEM and computer science is growing, which is why Davis says it’s important to start young.
“If students have to wait till they get to college to start taking those classes, a lot of times that turns them off because they get to a class and there's students who already have a background and they feel behind," said Davis.
Learning computer science skills in public schools also means there's more opportunity for those often left out to try their hand at the field.
“if a female tries computer science, we want her to try it and say it’s not for me, rather than not have the opportunity to even try it at all and to never know, ”
Turning their curiosity into a resume boost.
“A lot of us have no idea what happens when we type in a URL and all of a sudden it’s just like magic, it comes up. I think it's really cool for students to see how it gets digitized and how it gets sent to our own computers," said Davis.
