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The Clarkton School of Discovery was buzzing with excitement on Monday as Microsoft representative Robert Outlaw volunteered his time to assit with a lesson on computer coding. He will be at the school through Tuesday.
Jennifer Marlowe’s classes are taking part in the “Hour of Code” program. Marlowe said she was viewing the program’s website and saw a list of folks willing to volunteer their time and come out to your school and help students.
“I saw that and thought ‘All I can do is ask and they tell me no,'” said Marlowe.
The program is operated by code.org. Outlaw said he became interested in becoming a volunteer when an email was sent to all of the employees of Microsoft.
He said what realy piqued his interest about becoming a volunteer with the “Hour of Code” program was that the program affords him the opportunity to give back to the teachers that helped to develop his interest.
Outlaw told the students in Marlowe’s classes that computers can be awkward to work with and that there is a computer language called code that one can use to “talk” to them.
“Code is how we write programs to be able to tell the computer what to do,” said Outlaw.
He made an analogy to a very well behaved dog. Outlaw said a computer is similar to a very obedient dog in that it will do everything you tell it when you write your codes.
Both Marlowe and Outlaw pointed out that code is how programmers create computer-based games among other things. Outlaw added that code is how programmers tell the computer how the game is to act and how you want the characters to move, and so on.
“Coding is not just for games. Coding used for websites, too,” said Marlowe.
She said that in the Hour of Code course, students will have a multimedia experience whereby the students have exercises where they use code to complete certain tasks on the computer. Marlowe said the program has different themes where the students are shown a video and then they must use the computer code to perform various tasks related to the video they watched.
Outlaw said students start out using the Blockly Visual Computer Code language and by the end of class Tuesday, the students will be using Java Script. Outlaw explained that a big part of the computer industry uses Java Script.
Outlaw said that as a volunteer through this program, it gives him a chance to speak girls and minorities about the field of computer science and hopefully reach some of those that might not otherwise be talked to about considering computer-related careers.
Marlowe said that she wants her students to understand that there is another option when they are considering what they want for a career and/or a college major. She added the Hour of Code program also helps students to connect the technology they use everyday to the codes that are used to create it.
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