Program teaches parents, students skills
ALANNA WOLF-ARMSTRONG Staff Writer
Will Sheil, right, a second-grade student at St. Gregory’s School, shows his father, Rob Sheil, different computer programming techniques during the Hour of Code event Tuesday evening.
Students at St. Gregory’s School in Maryville and their parents took part in a computer programming workshop Monday evening as part of Computer Science Education Week.
The second annual Hour of Code event served as a 90-minute introduction to computer science and demonstrated that virtually anyone is capable of learning the basics involved in writing computer code.
“Coding” is a shorthand term that refers to the skills needed to write instructions that tell computers what to do on an operational level.
Cheryl Cornell, technology instructor/coach at St. Gregory’s, said the two 90-minute sessions were designed to introduce elementary computer programming to parents while allowing students to show off skills and concepts they study in technology classes.
During the event, parents and students experimented with two coding games: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Minecraft.”
While working with these two games, younger students used Blockly, a JavaScript library used to create visual block programming editors.
Young programmers use Blockly images, which are shaped like puzzle pieces, to assemble different computer commands.
Sixth- through eight-grade students participating in Hour of Code used JavaScript, the language employed by real-world programmers for a wide variety of applications, including most computer games.
Cornell, who has been the technology instructor at St. Gregory’s for 15 years, said that the Hour of Code was an important exercise for both students and parents.
“Computer coding and technology is such a valuable skill for students to learn, but computer literacy isn’t stressed in many of our schools,” Cornell said.
“This is a great way for students to learn those valuable coding and technology skills, and for their parents to see just what they’ve learned, and to even learn something new themselves.”
Similar Hour of Code events were being held this month at South Nodaway R-IV School in Barnard and Horace Mann Laboratory School on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University.
