New Hour of Code: Dance Party features new artists, a new dancer, and more

Dance Party2019 features new songs from these hit artists!

Hour of Code: Dance Party inspired tens of millions of students in classrooms around the world to dance and code last year, and we can’t wait for you to discover all the exciting new updates we have this year!

Students are ready to dance!

Here’s what you can expect in Dance Party 2019:

• New backgrounds and foregrounds! Thanks to the Amazon Future Engineer interns who visited us earlier this year, you can expect to see new Dance Party backgrounds and foregrounds! Here’s a sneak peak at a couple of the backgrounds and foregrounds designed by Amazon Future Engineer interns:

The expanding star background was made by AFE intern Amy Zhou.

The raining emoji foreground was made by AFE intern Greta Yu.

• New songs! We’ve expanded our selection of songs! Look out for “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus, “If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes, “Never Really Over” by Katy Perry, “High Hopes” by Panic! At the Disco, “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, “Calma” by Pedro Capó, “Starships” by Nicki Minaj, Jingle Bells, and more!
• KIDZ BOP collab! This year we’re collaborating with KIDZ BOP to include their version of “If I Can’t Have You” in Dance Party. Look out for a cool dance along video coming soon from the KIDZ BOP Kids featuring your favorite Dance Party moves!
• A new coding block! This new block will allow students to combine dance moves like never before, so you can create even more elaborate dance creations!
• A more effective and fun lesson progression! The lesson plan this year emphasizes interactivity and allows students to have more fun with group choreography.
• A brand new character! Meet Sloth, drawn and submitted by Genevieve P. from Herbert Hoover Middle School in Edison, NJ. Sloth is the winner of our Dance Party 2019 new character contest! Read more here about how we selected the winner and see the finalists.

And Your favorite songs from last year aren’t going anywhere. You can still dance to music by artists like: Ace of Base, Aha, Aloe Blacc and Avicii, Anitta, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, Bruce Springsteen, Carly Rae Jepsen, Calvin Harris, Ciara, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons, J. Balvin, Katy Perry, Keith Urban, Justin Bieber, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Los Del Rio, Luke Bryan, Macklemore, Madonna, MC Hammer, Miley Cyrus, Outkast, Selena Gomez, Sia, Village People, The Weeknd, will.i.am, and Yolanda Be Cool.

And that’s not all. We’ll have another brand new Hour of Code activity to share soon, so follow us on Twitter or Facebook to find out more! 🤖

If you’ve never hosted an Hour of Code before, check out the how-to guide or these five tips from experienced organizers. We even have an ”unplugged” Dance Party lesson for classrooms without internet or computers.

Once again this year, Dance Party is made possible because of support from Amazon Future Engineer*, a program meant to inspire and educate children and young adults from underserved communities about computer science. Learn more about AFE here.

Let’s make this year’s Hour of Code one of the biggest ever. Register your Hour of Code here, and then start dancing!

-Hadi Partovi, Code.org CEO

*Amazon Future Engineer is a four-part, childhood-to-career program that aims to inspire and educate children and young adults from underserved and underrepresented communities to try computer science. Learn more at www.amazonfutureengineer.com. (Note: The artists whose music is used in this tutorial are not sponsoring or endorsing Amazon as part of licensing use of their music to Code.org.)