Teaching kids to code brings politicians and rival companies together

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Google, alongside Apple, Facebook and others, is supporting the Hour to Code campaign which teaches children around the World how to code.

Getting kids to learn how to code isn't a new concept, but it hasn't been done on this scale before and with this much high-profile support.

The non-profit organisation behind this campaign, Code.org, said that 35,000 schools across 167 countries have agreed to teach coding in school for one hour a week.

What's more impressive is that since the project kicked off, 1.3 million students have participated and created over 40 million lines of code - causing software engineers around the World to take a huge collective gulp.

Star-studded code

The campaign has drawn support from Google, Apple, Yahoo, MSN, Ashton Kutcher, Shakira, Bing, Disney and even managed to unite Obama and Newt Gingrich in a rare moment of non-partisan support:

" width="420">YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XvmhE1J9PY

The campaign is also part of Computer Science Week, which starts today, and has managed to raise $10 million from the star-studded list.

In an endearingly humble blog post, Code.org explained that its goal was to get 10 million students on-board and hopefully get them to write 1 billion lines of code.

Just like turning up to a party in the same dress, Codeworks has launched an educational coding app called 'Hour to Code', which teaches iPhone users how to code in an hour. The app will be available this week and it aims to teach people how to code in a 'quick and fun' way.

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