Comcast : Using the Grinch to Teach Coding

That mean old Grinch may still be trying to steal Christmas. But the grouchy Christmas character we love to hate has been on a giving spree: teaching kids how to code.

NBCUniversal and Illumination Entertainment recently teamed up with Code Fever - a nonprofit working to close the technology gap among minority youth - to develop a fun yet educational game around basic computer coding concepts. To coincide with the November 2018 film release of Dr. Seuss' The Grinch, a group of developers at Code Fever created an interactive educational experience that could be used by students and teachers around the world. Code Fever typically provides one-on-one coding instruction to about 1,220 students a year. The game, however, offered the opportunity to reach millions, including many students who might not otherwise consider themselves interested in technology.

'When we launched in November, we watched the number of users climb from a few thousand a day to a few hundred thousand,' says Felecia Hatcher, founder of Code Fever and a 2017 recipient of a Comcast NBCUniversal Tech Impact AllStar award, in partnership with NationSwell. 'By the end of December, we were blown away when we reached over 1.6 million students.'