Computer Science Education Week: Day 4
There are only a couple more school days left in Computer Science Education Week! Make sure to do your Hour of Code in class, if you haven’t already. Find tutorials here: hoc.codehs.com and see below for some inspiring stories about how computer science is changing our world.
How Social Media Is Being Used to Improve Global Health
Imagine if checking on your health didn’t mean going into the dentist or making a trip to the doctors office. What if you could use a social media app that collects large amounts of health-related data from people all over the world to help predict when and how you might get sick? Biogram is an app that allows users to post their heart rate so that researchers can analyze and better understand the health of the global population and eventually help individuals lead better, healthier lifestyles.
NSF’s List of 10 Ways that Computing is Changing Science
Check out the National Science Foundation’s own list of some incredible ways that computing is changing science right now across industries. From predicting earthquakes to simulating car crashes, computing is currently helping advance all areas of science and create a better, safer tomorrow. Here at CodeHS, we’re particularly excited about how computing can help improve education. Check out the story about how NSF is using high-performance computing to figure out how individual students learn best and create learning pathways to suit them!
The Changing World of Gender Diversity in Computer Science
Technology companies have long had gender diversity problems — women are consistently underrepresented at tech companies. This isn’t good for women, and it’s not good for the companies either. Research shows that diverse teams are better at making good decisions and making more money. With more focus than ever on diversity in tech, companies are thinking more about what they can do to address the problem. Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women Computing hopes to help change the gender ratio in tech by bringing together the largest group of women technologists and fostering a discussion around improving gender diversity in tech.
Can you think of another app that could help improve your health? If you could use computing in any area of science, what would it be? What problem do you want to solve with computing? What do you think tech companies could do to improve diversity in the tech world?
Let us know in the comments or by reaching out to us on Twitter @CodeHS! And tune back in tomorrow to learn about more cool applications of computer science.
