Communities around the country are beginning to recognize the importance of computer science education, but only one city is devoting an entire month to the cause. Chicago City of Learning's Sybil Madison-Boyd joins Cheddar to tell us all about the Windy City's Month of Code initiative. She explains how the program's activities are helping to close the education gap.
Madison-Boyd reveals how coding helps children discover new opportunities and open doors. She gives a rundown of some of the programs and activities keeping families entertained and informed as they learn what she calls, "the language of the future." The director stresses the importance of equal access to education and shares inspiring stories of how children are responding to the program.
It's not Chicago's first time encouraging its youth community to learn to code. Madison-Boyd discusses the decision to expand the week-long initiatives into an entire month. She also gives tips on how other communities can borrow from Chicago's lessons and promote computer science education in their own cities.
With the number of Ukrainians being displaced due to the Russian invasion surging, two students from Harvard took it on themselves to develop a website to help connect potential hosts with refugees seeking housing. The co-founder of the website Ukraine Takes Shelter, Marco Burstein, joined Cheddar news to discuss working together with fellow freshman Avi Schiffmann to streamline the effort to aid Ukrainian refugees. "We basically worked for three days straight developing the website, and since then the response has been pretty incredible," Burstein said.
Image-sharing social media platform Pinterest is marking Women's History Month through its Pinterest Elevates program, designed to help grow 10 underrepresented businesses with monetary and strategic support. Alise Marshall, senior global lead for public affairs at Pinterest, joined Cheddar News to explain how the program is helping to uplift women and women of color with businesses of their own. “This was in response to issues that we saw happening in the community, and ways that we thought that we were uniquely positioned to respond," she said.
Twitter is pulling back its latest change after receiving major pushback from users. The feature pushed the user timeline experience onto a "home" feed that used individualized algorithms for displaying tweets rather than posting them in chronological order.
Cheddar catches up with Lior Keet, EY Emerging Technology Managing Director, at South by Southwest to discuss what's on the minds of today's tech leaders, and how IT can play a role in an organization's ESG agenda.
