Starting on December 4, 2023, millions of students all over the world began celebrating a week of Computer Science Education, an annual event meant to encourage K-12 students to explore coding. On Thursday, over 35 students at Lake George Elementary School participated as well, with an Hour of Code, thanks to Technology Teacher Geoff Bizan.
An Hour of Code, done through the website Code.org challenges students to use algorithms and solve problems through coding language. It creates a foundation for students to gain an understanding of simple coding language that they can build upon in the future. A new feature this year includes coding with artificial intelligence (AI) when developing the backgrounds to their creations. Students in K-6 use iPads and Chromebooks to program characters to find the best path through a mazes and to solve different puzzles.
While grasping the basics of coding is one goal of the Hour of Code, LGES also brought families together for this event. “It wasn’t just students having fun and learning, parents got to see first hand what their children were learning, and they got to be a part of the process by working together,” said Technology Teacher, Geoff Bizan.
Ryley Hitchcock, a second-grader at LGES and his dad not only participated in the event, but finished the entire Hour of Code, a task never done before in LGES history of the event! “It felt really good,” said Ryley. “My dad helped me with strategies, especially when we worked on the loop-three-loop. I really liked just spending time with my dad, too.”