Pharrell Links With Georgia Tech and Amazon for New Music Coding Initiative
Written by SOURCE on January 19, 2021
Pharrell has teamed up with Amazon and Georgia Tech to promote and teach coding to today’s youth.
Pharrell’s education equity nonprofit, YELLOW, announced on Tuesday that it would be creating an educational collaboration with Georgia Tech called “Your Voice is Power.” This initiative will teach middle and high school students how to share their positions on equity through coding.
“Your Voice is Power” includes five teaching modules with lesson plans that teach students coding while sparking conversations between the students and teachers about racial injustice. The collaboration will also include a competition that will require students to remix Pharrell’s single, “Entrepreneur,” using their own voice via Georgia Tech’s learn-to-code-through-music platform, EarSketch.
“Your Voice Is Power” is hoping to attract upwards of 100,000 students. It is also the latest initiative between Amazon Future Engineer, Amazon Music, and Georgia Tech to expand computer science education to more students in underserved communities.
“This collaboration between YELLOW, Amazon, and Georgia Tech is a celebration of Black creators and change-makers,” Pharrell explained. “YELLOW at its core believes that education is a pathway to success. Teaching kids future-ready skills like coding, especially those kids for whom opportunities like this have not been equally distributed, is how we prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
All middle and high school students in the United States and Canada can participate in “Your Voice is Power.” The first round of the competition will run from Jan. 19 through March 12 while the second round of the competition will run from March 15 through June 4. The remixes will be judged by a panel of Amazon engineers, Amazon Music team members, and music industry professionals. Winners will be chosen based on the quality of music, complexity and organization of their code, and their inclusion of thoughtful messages that touch on racial justice.
Teachers and students can visit AmazonFutureEngineer.com to see the full list of rules, the scoring guidelines, potential prizes, and accompanying curriculum.
