Hour of Code

The Outreach Committee hosted an Hour of Code day at Blacksburg Middle School on November 14th to introduce middle school students to coding using fun online games. Hour of Code Day is usually held during Computer Science Education Week in December, but since it falls just before finals this year, we moved the event to November. Hour of Code is designed to introduce students to coding in a way that is both fun and educational way. The day was broken up into two shifts with over thirty Galipatians working as volunteers over the course of the day. In some of the classes, the volunteers played Simon Says to demonstrate how computers will only follow the directions that you give them, then the rest of the class time was dedicated to playing the coding games on the Hour of Code website. These games revolve around drag-and-drop coding to get the character on the display to complete a task, create an animation, or draw using the code that the students put in. The volunteers enjoyed helping the students figure out the games, and they enjoyed introducing the students to coding since many of the volunteers are passionate about it. For more information on Hour of Code, go to https://hourofcode.com/us.