ROCHELLE — A grassroots campaign worldwide is hoping to spark interest in students to learn basic computer programming at an early age.
Students in the Rochelle Elementary School District recently participated in the Hour of Code™, coinciding with Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 4-10, held in recognition of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday (Dec. 9, 1906).
During HOC, students built games and simple apps they are already familiar with. Organizers of the event say starting early builds the foundation for success and helps to nurture problem-solving skills, logic and creativity.
The coding is geared towards learners at all levels ranging from pre-reader, grades 2-5, grades 6-8, and high school aged students. Central School teacher Amy Hayden explained the benefits of giving students this opportunity not only exposes them to building games as coders, but it also teaches them perseverance and attention to detail.
Hayden has had her students participate in HOC for the last three years.
“The purpose of HOC is to introduce kids to the skill of coding, which is creating online programming...the kids get exposed to the backside of the games they play by learning to create them,” Hayden explained. “They have a series of tasks to do and after each one, they ‘run’ the sequence to see if it did what they wanted and what is needed. If not, they go back and see how to improve it.”
Accuracy is a must when programming a computer, and just like learning a new language, people are not fluent right away. It takes practice, patience, and an abstract way of thinking, which is something students at the HUB Project practiced with last week.
HUB Project teacher Joe McKinney said the students started with the tutorial geared to their grade level and proceeded to program basic concepts.

“It’s like giving the computer driving directions…they are telling the computer what the object should do,” McKinney said. “When they complete the steps, they run the program. They get to see what they have created and if need be through trial and error they can make adjustments.”
Adding, “It encourages them to figure it out.”
Several students were making Google doodles, which many may be familiar with when opening the search engine. Another student was trying his hand at programming Minecraft, a video game using blocks to build structures.

Middle school
About 150 students in Rochelle Middle School participated in a two-week unit of coding lessons in Vic Worthington’s classroom, with three classes dedicated to HOC.
The students worked on programming video games and creating simple apps such as Flappy Bird. They sent the program to a phone or tablet and coded some graphic design artwork.

Worthington explained the students worked well and learned how to solve challenges and problems posed to them. Worthington also participated, working alongside the students on some of the programming.
“If the kids weren’t getting the syntax just right on their code, the software wouldn’t allow them to advance until it was corrected,” Worthington said. “That’s pretty frustrating, myself included.  It gave my kids a lot of opportunities to solve the problems faster than I could, which is always a good motivator for them.”
The founder and CEO of Code.org explained the purpose of HOC is to take the mystery out of coding and help students realize that computer programming is not rocket science. The campaign is supported by over 400 partners and 200,000 educators worldwide and is brought to millions of students in over 45 languages.
Learning how to code is a valuable skillset that is needed in the 21st century by employers all across the industry from agriculture and fashion to public safety, arts, and entertainment.
“It’s a great way for kids to get exposed to the building of games as coders, along with teaching them about perseverance, attending to precision, using tools strategically, and making use of structure,” Hayden said. “From what I’ve observed as my students code, it’s a whole new world of 21st century skills that some students really find a passion for.”