The Coding Revolution

Yesterday our kids participated in the Hour of Code. We joined six of our very talented colleagues (Sheri Wells, Sherri Rachal, Rob Rambach, Patrick Dempsey, Ashley Coffman and Jason Heisel) in planning seven different coding sessions that the kids could choose to attend. The sessions ranged from a Google Hangout with a high school coding class to robotics to coding sites (code.org and madewithcode.com). These kinds of opportunities only come around once in a while, so we jumped on this one with no hesitation. We found that the kids, for the most part, love the variety of sessions and latched on to at least one of them.

Some of our team kiddos have now decided to change their 20% Time projects to ones that involved coding in one way or another. Many of the kids seem to have found their niche in school now that they have been exposed to coding. Kids who were doing work, but not excited about it, are now coming to school early or staying late to code. They are also collaborating on different coding events and sharing all of their learning. These kiddos are more excited about what they are building with code than we have seen them about anything else so far this year. The beautiful thing is that, almost accidentally, we have been able to provide kids with an opportunity to learn about something that they really want to do. Here are some photos from yesterday's Hour of Code.