Coding Class, Then Naptime: Computer Science For The Kindergarten Set

Grant Hosford is co-founder of a company called codeSpark. Its game-like software, The Foos, teaches basic computer programming skills -- "the ABCs of coding"-- with no reading necessary. It's aimed at children as young as 5, and it has been downloaded 700,000 times so far in 150 countries.

The Foos is part of a trend toward increasing emphasis on code as a fundamental literacy. You may have heard about the Hour of Code nonprofit initiative, which claims tens of millions of student participants; or New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio's recent announcement that he intends to require teaching computer science in all grades for all students. "A computer science education is literacy for the 21st century," the Mayor said at the announcement. A group of educators, researchers and entrepreneurs like Hosford is taking that analogy very seriously. They're arguing that the basic skills of coding, such as sequencing, pattern recognition and if/then conditional logic, should be introduced alongside or even before traditional reading, writing, and math.