Hour of Code Events

Select the image above to see my "Hour of Code" presentation.

Select the image above to read my article based on my experiences.

As a passionate promoter of computer programming throughout my career, my first experience bringing coding instruction to students was during Computer Science Education Week  2013. I facilitated and taught an Hour of Code event at Dexter High School. Almost 600 students (grades 9-12) participated during the week.  Anywhere from 33 to 82 students worked together in pairs on computers to complete a Javascript tutorial created by CodeAcademy. This tutorial guided students through 15 steps to interact with the program code and to write new code to animate a word.

The completion rate for the tutorial was about 95% for most classes- and this was among students who when asked if they had ever done computer programming before, not more than a handful would raise their hand. 

Many times throughout the day I heard "Woo!", "Yes!", "Bam!", and "This is cool!". The experience of working through the tutorial helped students understand that they were the ones telling the computer what to do. The tutorial’s preview window showed the the computer’s response to the changing code as it was input by the students.

Though the Hour of Code event aligned best with the curricula of the math department- I stressed to my principal, the teachers, and my students that learning how to program a computer “teaches you how to think”. Knowing how to communicate with a computer in the language it understands teaches you how to work step-by-step through a problem to devise the most “elegant” solution to achieve your goals.

Many times I encouraged my students to try different solutions that would end up with the same result. This helped them to understand that there are many ways to tell a computer what to do, but that some options are simpler and more effective than others. Students were encouraged to think through the process- “What are you telling the computer to do?”, “What is the tutorial asking you to do?”, “What can you do differently to tell the computer to do what the tutorial is asking you to do?”

The students not only had fun doing the tutorial, they actually learned something too. I encouraged all students to return to the Code.org website to try other online coding lessons. 

Since then, I have facilitated multiple successful Hour of Code events at Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And I continue to encourage and promote year-round access to coding instruction in my school district for all ages. Constantly learning from previous events, I am able to scale events to provide the opportunities for individual classes, entire schools, and districtwide.