Today we participated in the “Hour of Code” in honor of the International Hour of Code. It’s an initiative to expose school age children to coding all over the world- 180 countries. I was especially interested this year because we had the technology at school to support it conveniently, and I wanted the girls to see that coding could be for them too.

We started with a Khan Academy tutorial which involves drawing with JavaScript.  There were a few minutes of frustration, but the girls intentionally decided to stick with it and figure out the concepts. Everyone had a great time making the drawings.

The tutorial was very helpful, and to some people, the process was easier than for others, but I was surprised by how well everyone liked it, persevered, and really had fun. In reviewing the photos, there are a LOT of smiling faces.

It was a good opportunity for collaboration- as one person figured out how to do something, they showed the others, so how to’s were passed around quickly.

I had gone over the tutorials a few times myself, to make sure the system would work with our computers and wifi.  I also wanted to make sure I knew what would be coming, since coding is new to me too. I learned so much more from watching them, and although I helped here and there, the group mainly relied on each other.

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/hour-of-code/hour-of-drawing-code/v/welcome-hour-of-code

https://hourofcode.com/us

https://www.codecademy.com/

The post Code Week! appeared first on Sabot at Stony Point.