North Adams Students Get a Taste of Computer Coding
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Brayton Elementary School third-grade teacher Jaana Mutka had three words for why she scheduled her class to participate in the "Hour of Code" this week.
"Because it's awesome," Mutka said as she surveyed her 20 students intent on their iPads, some upright in chairs, some sprawled on the floor.
"Hour of Code" is an international event that aims to "demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics," according to the website hourofcode.com. People, groups and schools can sign up to host an event through the website, watch tutorials, register for prizes and basically get pumped up for learning something that's so important for kids today, who will need to use computers for the rest of their lives.
"When you grow up, every single one of you will be doing something with a computer," Mutka said she told the students when preparing them for the event, which in her classroom was 9 to 10 a.m. on Wednesday. "It's important for the students to see how computers work."
To get them going, Mutka let the kids pretend she was a robot and they had to write code to make her move. That opened their eyes to the level of detail that computers need to be programmed with to do simple tasks.
"They didn't understand they have to do every single step," she said, laughing as she admitted they had made her crash into a cabinet.
The students got savvier as they picked up the iPads, though. Given the option of coding in the popular games Minecraft or Angry Birds, most students chose Minecraft, doing everything from building houses to planting crops using the website's programs, which offered levels the students could progress through.
The class got some assistance with the event from Williams College: Molly Polk, who coordinates the college's Center for Learning in Action Elementary Outreach Program with North Adams schools, brought three senior computer science majors to Mutka's class to be a resource - and role models - for the young students. The day before, Williams students also had visited the classroom of Brayton fourth-grade teacher Marie McCarron, where an Hour of Code event had been a rousing success in teaching fundamental skills.
"I had one girls say, 'I want to be a computer scientist when I grow up,'" McCarron said, adding that she plans to tie coding into future lessons to reinforce what the students learned. "I want it to be something they want to do. They're very excited about it."
Mutka and McCarron were among a handful of North Adams Public Schools teachers to embrace an Hour of Code event this year, said the district's technology coordinator, Diane Ryczek, who not only observed the third-graders on Wednesday but jumped in to help them, too.
"It's a lot of fun, but it really makes them think," Ryczek said. "Technology entices kids anyway To engage kids, anything you can do technologically helps you two-fold.
"It's meeting them at their level."
Ryczek took that same tact with the teachers who were comfortable planning an Hour of Code event this year, but she said she hopes that next year coding events can be schoolwide throughout the district as it aims to find new ways to engage students. And observing Mutka's class, that goal seemed to have been reached, she said.
"Nothing like seeing smiles when the lightbulb comes on," she said.
Tags: Brayton, computers, technology,
