Ms. Ufuk Yagci - Educational Technology Coordinator
Why All Students Should Learn How to Code
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Technology Corner
EU Code Week is a movement that celebrates creativity, problem-solving and collaboration through programming. Each year it is celebrated in a week between October 5-20 across Europe. In 2018, 2,7 million people in more than 70 countries around the world took part in EU Code Week.
EU Code Week is a movement that celebrates creativity, problem-solving and collaboration through programming. Each year it is celebrated in a week between October 5-20 across Europe. In 2018, 2,7 million people in more than 70 countries around the world took part in EU Code Week.
As the technology department, we planned for an hour of coding activity for each grade level in the secondary school, grades 6 through 12, and we celebrated it on October 15th in Periods 7 & 8 with an Hour-of-Code Activity. Hour of Code is a campaign which was initiated in 2013. Each year, the campaign is organized by Code.org which is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. The participation doubles each year, with numerous schools organizing an hour of code activity from all over the world.
Our objective of this hour of coding was to give every student and staff member an opportunity to discover coding and have fun with it. Different activities were planned and offered for each grade level. There was no requirement for prior knowledge or technical skills for any of the activities and the activities consisted of creating music, drawings, cards, and games with code. The plans included explanatory videos and scripts and anyone who participated had the opportunity to discover a few lines of coding. At the end of each activity, participants had the option to share the links or screenshots to their creative work.
Clearly we did not become experts by coding for one hour but we had fun coding our own musical beats, creating games like a geometry jumper game, a Flappy Bird game or even a quiz game for our mobiles, coding and creating fireworks for our iPhones, creating holiday cards on a web page with HTML, designing self-portraits with JavaScript, coding with Java, using block coding for designing patterns, snowflakes, designing Logos with Python, creating our dance party with block coding. Time was limited yet it was enough to try and write a few lines of code. This activity allowed everyone who participated to see that computer science can be fun, creative and accessible for all ages and for anyone regardless of their background. Moreover, at the end of one hour we felt that we became creators of technology and it was fun!
At the completion of this activity, Verdala International School was awarded with a certificate of recognition for participating in the EU Code Week which is supported by the European Commission.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this activity making it so enriching!
SNAPSHOTS FROM THE HOUR-OF-CODE Link
https://sites.google.com/verdala.org/snapshots2019-hourofcode/home