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Kathleen Kennedy

Hour of Code to feature Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Jessica Guynn
USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Code.org, the nonprofit that offers free online lessons in computer programming to students from kindergarten to high school, is tapping the power of the force to reach more young people, especially girls.

Code.org in partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm has created a one-hour tutorial, Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code, to teach coding basics to kids.

Riding the Death Star-sized anticipation for next month's opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, students will take a one-hour tutorial from Princess Leia or Rey on how to build their own Star Wars games and program the droids R2-D2, C-3PO and BB-8.

"By featuring powerful heroines Leia and Rey in this fun computer programming tutorial, we hope to inspire students of all backgrounds to try learning this foundational field," said Hadi Partovi, CEO of Code.org.

The tutorial in partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm is called Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code. It teaches logic and problem solving through basic computer programming.

Rey, the new movie's heroine played by Daisy Ridley, is a scavenger in a starship graveyard. She is seen here with the BB-8 droid.

Students can write code that helps Rey, the movie's heroine who scavenges in a starship graveyard, guide BB-8 through a space mission. Or they can create a Pac-Man-like game in which C-3PO is chased by storm troopers or a game of tag in which R2-D2 tries to catch mouse droids that keep multiplying. To guide students through the lesson, there are short video lectures from Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, Rachel Rose, a senior R&D engineer working on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Charita Carter, senior creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering.

The games the students build can be played on smartphones and shared with friends and family.

The tutorial is part of Hour of Code, in which kids can take an hour to learn some coding basics. The Star Wars tutorial will be available starting Monday. The final version of the tutorial will be available Dec. 7 as Code.org kicks off the third annual Hour of Code campaign during Computer Science Education Week.

Princess Leia with R2D2 and C-3PO.

Code.org puts on the annual campaign to increase participation among young people across gender, race, ethnicity and nationality. Partovi says more than 100 million students in 180 countries have tried an Hour of Code tutorial, including one in three students in U.S. schools.

This is Code.org's second collaboration with The Walt Disney Company. Last year it worked with Disney Interactive to create a tutorial starring Anna and Elsa from the popular movie Frozen. Thirteen million students took the course.

A scene from one of the Star Wars games that kids can build

Disney is also donating $100,000 to support Code.org's efforts to bring computer science education to after school programs in the United States. One classroom will win a trip to San Francisco for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the visual effects in Star Wars.

"For generations, Star Wars has sparked kids' curiosity and imagination, and we hope the appeal of characters like Princess Leia and Rey will help fuel greater participation in science and math, especially among girls, around the world," Kennedy said in a statement. Lucasfilm is a subsidiary Disney.

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