If you can code, then you can succeed

Fourth grade students sat in the Watson library last week hunched over computers and furiously typing and clicking. They were playing games and solving puzzles. And, in doing so, learning out to write code.

The students, all part of Mrs. Antonina Spallino Ford’s class, were participating in the Hour of Code: a global initiative to teach students how to write simple computer code as part of Computer Science Education Week.

Code is the language of computers. It’s what lies beneath every program and website. A basic knowledge of code is extremely useful for students, and can be applied to many different fields: math, science, art and more.

To participate, students all went to www.code.org, where they played different games that were just window dressing to cover the actual work they were doing. Characters from Star Wars, Minecraft and Angry Birds made the tasks more appealing to kids, but it was all learning how to code.

Students in Spallino Ford’s class were excited to learn how to make one of the Angry Birds move around obstacles to find a pig, and to make an artist draw a line. All through code commands.

“It’s higher-level thinking and real-world skills,” said Trish Montemarano, the STELLAR coordinator at Watson. All of the code games the students played were age-appropriate. As the students get older, the tasks get more advanced. In fifth grade classes, they will soon be writing code together to give simple commands to a robot.