This year students at The Cove School participated in the Hour of Code. Hour of Code is a global event reaching tens of millions of children in over 180 countries. Students at Cove participated by completing block coding. They solved puzzles by moving blocks of code on the screen to teach the basic concepts of coding. These puzzles ranged from making a character move, to assigning points and what happens when a character touches another character.
The students were excited because this year’s tutorials included Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Minecraft. Elementary students were assisted by the High School Computer Coding class along with volunteers from Pearson Education.
During the Star Wars tutorial students were asked to move the droid BB-8 around the screen to collect scrap metal. Then, students were asked to assign actions to the arrow keys to move R2-D2 around the screen to deliver messages to Rebel Pilots, while avoiding Stormtroopers. In the Minecraft Tutorial, students started by moving either Alex or Steve around the screen to collect resources. They moved on to creating loops that allowed their character to build a house by repeating a series of actions over and over. The goal of this global event is to raise awareness of coding and nurture problem-solving skills, logic and creativity.
The students became immediately engrossed in their work, and were very pleased with the results they achieved! Check out Cove's Hour of Code in this video.