SENIOR PROJECTS

How Can I Make a Difference?

Code Kihei Charter

My design for CodeKCS came from my own experiences of learning how to code as a young person who didn’t know where to start. My coding education proved to be a difficult, inefficient process for me, one where I wished that I had more mentors to help me learn how to code in a way that pertained to my own interests. It wasn’t until my Sophomore year of high school, when I had been actively programming for three years already, that I attended a Creative Programming class at the Hawaii STEM Conference that inspired me and made me realize that there was a better way to learn programming. I love code, but I feel that they way we teach it makes a lot of potential coders hate it as much as I did when I was starting out. With this project, I hope to inspire my students as the Creative Programming mentor inspired me, and show them that code can be a beautiful, useful skill for enhancing their creativity.

The purpose of this class is to give students a starting point for learning how to code, as well as to provide mentorship along the way. This course aims to break down stereotypes and stigma around code and show students that programming can be a helpful skill they can use to enhance their current hobbies. One thing to note is that this is a coding class, not a computer science class. I am teaching code as a tool or a skill and I am intentionally not putting an emphasis on entering “STEM fields”, as the purpose of this class isn’t to tell students what to do with their lives. I feel that putting an emphasis on such things may sour them towards the content of the class. Rather, I would like to encourage the students to augment their current interests with code.

One of the goals of this class is to increase code literacy, as knowing a little bit about code can be a very useful skill in today’s world. If students run into web pages that won’t load, applications that won’t start, or just regular computer problems, they will be able to use their coding skills to problem solve. I would also like to encourage and inspire the students to continue learning more about code and computers. Much of this course is focused on attitudes towards code as opposed to turning everyone into “great programmers” within the short four weeks (an impossible and impractical goal, I might add). I administer lots of surveys and feedback sheets within this class and I would like to wee a statistically significant increase in coding interest between the first and final surveys. For my purposes, I would hopefully like to see better course feedback every week and significant improvements in ‘class productivity’ scores that I have them give every week. As for measuring learning and class participation, I would like to see that every student finishes at least three projects or assignments, and has a portfolio to showcase them. And again, for my own purposes, I hope to conduct student interviews if we have enough time. I would like to capture both the positives and the places for improvement.

Who-is the community that this project affects and how? Students at KCS Introduce them to a skill that may help them in the future Try to undo some of the sub par coding experiences they’ve had in the past One of the hardest parts of learning how to program is figuring out where to start

Where and When-is this project happening? Lab 2 February 9, 16, 23, 26, 28, March 2 3rd, 4th, and 5th period

How-are you executing the success of the project Lots of ways that the students can contact me for help (Slack, email, Google Hangouts) Sending them resources and helpful information through Slack Helping them in class with their code, so that they don’t feel like they’re doing this all alone Being flexible with my lesson plans to cater to the students’ needs Making screen capture videos of what they’re supposed to do, because many people learn well from seeing examples Using the student feedback to make the class better (such as adding in more examples) Giving the students syntax help sheets so that they can really get an idea of how the code works as opposed to just trying to memorize syntax. Project based learning, so that the students feel that they are using code for things that they find useful.

It’s a large task to teach a class, especially as a student that’s not much older than the kids I am teaching (according to my survey, there are a few of them that are the same age as me). One must find ways to make a very unpopular subject (coding) fun and engaging for the students. You have to have a very well organized curriculum, yet it must still be flexible enough to be changed if the students’ needs are different from what you anticipated. For this reason, it is quite the impressive, rigorous project, as you need the perfect mix of being very prepared yet not too meticulously prepared to the point where things are absolutely set in stone.

This is also the creative aspect of the project. This class, due to many constraints and the failure of previous coding classes, can NOT just follow the template of programming classes in other places. It’s important to take pieces of things from other curriculums, just to avoid reinventing the wheel, but there is a certain amount of innovation present in trying to teach such a different type of class at our school. Especially since the focus of this class is on creative programming, as opposed to computer science.

I hope to inspire my students to continue their programming journeys after this class. I hope to give them the skills they need to start programming more seriously, if it interests them enough. Hopefully this class will help break down some negative programmer stereotypes for students at our school and create a better culture of innovation and problem solving, which are helpful tools no matter what field students wish to go into. I am carefully recording my curriculum, even as it’s changing in-class, so that this class can live on in the future even after I graduate. I have some people that I have talked to casually about possibly carrying on the class in the future (both teachers and students), however towards the end of the project, I am going to have to have serious conversations about who the successor will be. I hope that CodeKCS continues to be a class offered at our school for years to come. My dream would be for it to even become a semester-long class for the first semester of school, then a club that hosts code-related events for the whole school the second semester.