On Friday, December 12, the freshmen class participated in a very interesting activity. This activity was computer science education week’s “hour of code”. This event is a world wide effort to get more young people involved in a computer science field. More and more people each second are getting a phone or a computer and most do not know how their digital devices function. The activity gave some background knowledge into the computer science field to the students and details such as the importance of knowing how to program a computer. When the freshmen class started working on the hour of code, I asked fellow teachers and classmates how they’re doing it and how they liked it and their thoughts so on. I asked a fellow student, Chloe Napoli, what her first steps to learning about code was; she answered, “I read step by step instructions on how to make my own website and practiced by also playing games on code.org”.
When asked how he felt about the games he played, Glen Full commented, “It was fun, and challenged me at some points. In the end, I’m glad I learned about it.” For the next 3 hours of this activity, I decided to try out the games for myself. Agreeing with Chloe and Glenn, I think that the activities on code.org really do help you understand the concept of how a computer works and the way websites are created. Following Glenn, I asked Mr. Cortes, our Algebra 1 teacher, what he learned and how he liked it, he replied, “I learned how to do java script. It was very challenging for me but I am grateful I learned it in the end.” Going around and interviewing students and teachers was enjoyable and my experience was very fun and interesting. I now know facts that I would have never known which are important for the future. There are up to 10,000 computer science jobs in each state and not more than 200 people to fill those jobs.
This activity was one of the many great experiences the entire freshmen class gets to partake in as part of the freshmen seminar experience. Hopefully, many students are looking forward to taking a computer science class in the future as a result of working the “hour of code”. As Steve Jobs said, “Everyone should learn to code. It teaches you how to think.” The world could always use a few more thinkers.