During Computer Science Education Week, Google celebrates 50 years since kids programming languages were first introduced to the world with a very special creation. Today's Doodle was developed through the close teamwork of not one or two but three teams: the Google Doodle team, Google Blockly team, and researchers from MIT Scratch!
Modern parents often come up against traditional parenting norms while trying to intellectually stimulate their children in the digital age. Hungary's most famous export, the Rubik's cube, still enjoys steady sales, but multicoloured abacuses and other educational toys are slowly being replaced by their digital equivalents.
Children were first introduced to writing computer programs, or coding, 50 years ago, and Google has marked this milestone with an interactive doodle. The doodle features on the home screen of Google's search engine and it is offering the millions of its daily users an opportunity to experience how even pre-schoolers can be exposed to coding. The task is to help a bunny navigate a tiled walkway collecting carrots, and is similar to the old playtime favourite, hopscotch.
Today, computers are used in almost every aspect of our lives. We have them in our homes, at work, and in our pockets. The digital revolution among children often tended to be dismissed as 'wasteful' video games, but Silicon Valley's technology advocates believe that to demonise all things digital would be an unfair assessment.
Google has also set up CS First, a platform for introducing children in the 9-14 age group to programming languages. The curriculum is designed to introduce computer science concepts through themed exercises spanning art, fashion, sport, music, and game design. Each theme has eight activities and roughly ten hours of content.
But first head to the Google Doodle for a fun (and at times challenging) introduction to the joys of coding.








































































































