Our Girls Code

FEATURE CODING

Our Girls CODE EMPOWERING Harpeth Hall students with skills for the future.

by Varina Buntin Willse, Class of ’95

It is Wednesday December 7, just after lunch, and 8th graders are spilling into Mrs. Lucas’s class. The atmosphere is one of excited chatter even before Mrs. Lucas declares it a day of “free coding.” That announcement prompts an arm-pumping cheer from the class, as if a game-winning goal has just been scored. And then all promptly settle into their work. What are the girls doing and, so obviously, enjoying? Coding.

CODING AS CURRICULUM

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his first full week of December happens to be Computer Science Education Week, and students around the globe are engaging in the Hour of Code™, a 60-minute tutorial intended to demystify the concept of coding and teach its basic components. Middle school students at Harpeth Hall, however, are receiving far more than an abbreviated glimpse or even a crash course into the subject matter. For them, Coding is a required class, which meets roughly once a week over the course of four semesters in 7th and 8th grades, and is followed up by upper school electives: Introduction to Computer Science, AP (Advanced Placement) Computer Science, and several other options offered by One Schoolhouse (formerly Online School for Girls). Though coding as a class is new to Harpeth Hall, the emphasis on computer science is not. Over the past several years, the school has been intentional in its efforts to incorporate coding projects, lessons and activities related to the field. Having introduced robotics roughly ten years ago, the school now offers competitive robotics teams in the middle and upper schools as well as newer clubs, such as ‘Robotics Tinkering’ and ‘CODE!’ Students not engaged in these extracurricular offerings have still been given a chance to learn computer science skills within the curriculum itself. For several years in the middle school students have completed coding projects in math, reading and science using JavaScript, Scratch, and Lego Robotics. In upper school math classes last year, students were writing programs for their graphic calculators, while in science they were developing breadboard circuits and controlling robots. In Winterim, students in Cryptography studied binary code and Bacon’s encryption scheme while those in Animation and Game Design used the programming language “Processing” to build arcade-style games. All of these offerings have set the stage for the current shift toward more focused instruction in coding, a task that at first might seem uninteresting or even intimidating to many students.

CODING 101 What is coding? A set of instructions that tell the computer what to do Is it the same thing as programming? Basically, Yes. Why the two terms? Originally, “programming” was the formal act of writing code. The term “coding” became popular with the “hacker” do-ityourself types that viewed their craft with less formality. Recently the term “coding” has resurfaced as a more playful and non-intimidating description of programming for beginners. How many programming languages are there? 500+ and counting. Examples include C, Python, Scratch, Java, JavaScript and SQL. What does coding do? It is used to create computer software, websites, apps, games, machines, art and all

LEAD CONFIDENTLY

sorts of things not yet

tephanie Zeiger, middle school Science Teacher and coordinator of the middle school coding curriculum, acknowledges that when she first defines coding for her students as “a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do,” the common response is one of boredom. When she adds that this set of instructions allows us “to design new technolo-

the essential skill

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HALLWAYS

invented, making coding of tomorrow.