HUMBOLDT — On Thursday, ANW instructor Lisa Wicoff braided two marvels of human invention — high-level computer coding and hip-hop line dancing — into one compelling lesson designed to impress upon students the importance of computer science in their daily lives.
The occasion was the Hour of Code, a global movement aimed at introducing millions of young people to the world of coding and to the many possible careers that depend on a labor force educated in the latest computer technology. The celebration coincided with Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 11-15).
Over the course of two days, more than 40 area elementary and middle school students paraded through the offices at the ANW Special Education Co-op, in Humboldt, where Wicoff, the agency’s gifted facilitator, walked students through the process of transforming arid strands of code into live animation.
Following instructions set down by Code.org and Scratch.mit.edu, the students, crouched in pairs over their laptops, learned to turn rudimentary ingredients of source code into a pixelated exhibit of hip-hop dancing reindeers.
Dubbed the 1st Annual Reindeer Games Coding Seminar, the two-day event included a talk by Kansas Senator Caryn Tyson — who has forged a successful career in information technology, remotely, from her home in the tiny town of Parker — and a Skype conversation with Josh Kriegshauser, a prominent video game engineer, originally from Kansas, now based in San Diego.
Aside from the simple fun attending the inaugural Reindeer Games, there was a more urgent pedagogical point at stake.
“Because we’re a rural community,” explained Wicoff, “we’re trying to get these kids to understand that there are millions of jobs in computer science that are going to go unfulfilled.” Wicoff pointed to one statistic showing that for the more than 500,000 available computing jobs nationwide, last year, fewer than 43,000 computer science students graduated into the workforce. “And so, the jobs are out there. I have students from places as remote as Neosho Falls. Today, though, you can live in Neosho Falls and you can make a living by telecommuting. … We want our kids to at least have the idea that they can come back [to southeast Kansas] and live. And technology — what we’re doing today — is one important avenue that we can use to make that happen.”
SPEAKING IN CODE
