With all the national attention to writing codes to break codes on certain cell phones it is important to upgrade the national standards in education. All of our electronic toys and necessities are controlled by codes. Not just cellphones, but computers, tablet computers, refrigerators, washers and dryers, cars and other toys we don’t even think of as being computer based.
St Mary’s Catholic Community Grade School has not forgotten that teaching students about writing code is just as important today as it was years ago. To begin with, if students don’t learn how to write code, how can they learn to fix code problems, or write one that is better? If students don’t learn how to write code, how can they grow up to be future spies and code-breakers?
According to St. Mary’s Principal Thomas Ruiz, computers are everywhere but fewer schools teach computer science than 10 years ago.
“Girls and minorities are severely underrepresented,” he said. “Good news is, St. Mary’s Catholic Community School in Crown Point is on its way to change this. Every one of the students at St. Mary’s from grades K to 8th participated in the largest learning event in history, the Hour of Code.”
Ruiz said younger students in kindergarten and first grade programmed a robot to move around a course and make blocks light up. Students in grades 2 through 5 wrote code with a Star Wars theme to make a character move around a maze and had a chance to create some of their own games.
Students in grades 6 through 8 learned some programming in Java.
“Programming doesn’t just happen during the Hour of Code at St. Mary’s. Students have been learning to make games and even write code to create apps for their devices and phones,” said Heather Clarkson, technology teacher. The robotics teams use code all the time to program their robot entries.
The Hour of Code, organized by the nonprofit Code.org and other groups, is a statement that today’s generations of students are ready to learn critical skills for 21st century success according to Ruiz. His students took part in the Hour of Code during the first week in December and are continuing to use those skills as the school year progresses. This is an ongoing part of their curriculum according to Ruiz.
Code.org’s website shows the impact in Indiana. They quote Steve Jobs, “Computer Science is … something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have a mastery of to some extent.”
The website states that Indiana has 5,425 open computing jobs with the average salary for computing occupation in Indiana at $72,942, which is significantly higher than the average salary in the state. To further the need for more computer science education the state had only 1,237 computer science graduates in 2014 and only 15 percent of those were female.
St. Mary’s School staff is working hard to bring more opportunities to all students. This Roman Catholic school had been educating children since 1872. They are an “A” ranked school by the State and have also been awarded a National Four-Star school status.
