Launching Swiss Computer Science Education Week

The systemic introduction of computer science education in federalist countries such as the United States, Germany, and Switzerland can be extremely difficult. The lack of top down dissemination mechanisms makes it hard to scale up even successful Computer Science Education strategies to national levels, necessitating bottom up approaches. High profile initiatives such as Computer Science EducationWeek, including the Hour of Code tutorials, provide an alternate route to reaching potentially large numbers of students, but in international contexts require proper adaptation to local languages and cultures. In 2014, Scalable Game Design Switzerland launched the Swiss computer science education Week featuring a multi-lingual "Frogger 3D" game creation activity. Results show the power of this bottom up approach to help jump-start student exposure to computer science in a relatively short amount of time. The first Swiss Computer Science EducationWeek reached 10,000 Swiss students, from 21 out of 26 Swiss cantons, with qualitative feedback and quantitative retention data indicating a sustainable and enjoyable experience for students and teachers.