The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science is pleased to announce a first of its kind cross initiative program supporting both the Arkansas Computer Science (#ARKidsCanCode) and Arkansas Reading Initiative for Student Excellence (#RISEArkansas). Under this program all 896 K-8 public school libraries will be eligible to receive a coding device and coding related books.

Public school libraries that serve students in any combination of grades K-8 are eligible to receive a Micro:Bit, which is a small programmable computer, and a copy of Code Your Own Games!: 20 Games to Create with Scratch by Max Wainewright. Public school libraries that serve students in any combination of grades K-5 also will be eligible to receive a copy of Sasha Savvy Loves to Code by Sasha A. Alston.

To be eligible to receive the books and devices, public school Library Media Specialist must attend an ADE Office of Computer Science approved training on the microbit that will be provided at every Educational Service Cooperative (ESC) in Arkansas. A list of approved sessions, provided by the Arkansas Computer Science Specialists, with registration links will be posted at https://goo.gl/Lp9A87. There will be no fees charged for Library Media Specialist to attend these trainings. For Library Media Specialist that can not attend one of the ESC based trainings, ADE is working with AETN to create an online training through the ArkansasIDEAS Learning Management System that should be launched by May of 2018.