Scratchers, Pico Engineers & Career Day Fun

Tuesday morning we hosted a fantastic PicoCrickets session for the fifth grade students of Artesia, NM's Central Elementary School. In total, 39 students built and programmed robots in teams of two to three after a short informational session about computer science. We have done many PicoCricket sessions in the past, but this session was by far the largest we've taught this year. Despite the large size of the group, the students were very attentive and interested in programming so the session flowed smoothly. Overall, the session was a huge success, and the students left with a great experience in computer science.

Scratch Game

Later that night, the Parents and Advocates of Gifted Education (PAGE) were itching for a lesson in computer science, so we gave them Scratch. Scratch is a two-dimensional animation program tailored to young programmers-in-training who are interested in game design and animation. During our session at the Branigan Library, we taught 35 students and 30 parents how to build a simple game involving a crab catching beach balls on a boardwalk. Both parents and students alike enjoyed the easy-to-use interface and variety of customizable features Scratch has to offer. In the end, everyone enjoyed the open-source fun!

Thursday morning we advocated for studying and working in computer science at the Hillrise Elementary School Career Day. We completed four presentations for about 75 fifth grade students; by the end of each presentation they were all excited about computer science. A few of them even wanted to be software engineers and graphic designers. Even the students who wanted to pursue other pathways were interested in learning more about computer science.

On Tuesday alone, we reached out to a total of 74 students, then during Thursday's career day presentations we reached out to another 75 students, bringing our total for the week up to 149 students.