A class at Isaac Brock School were geared up for a morning of fun and learning when Canada Learning Code's special Code Mobile paid a visit to their school.
Student Evan Mariash won the coding workshop for his classmates after his grandmother entered him into the YTV Kid Tech Nation Contest back in 2018.
Each of the grand prize winners received visit from the Code Mobile, a travelling computer lab with laptops, equipment and specialized instructors to deliver a Canada Learning Code workshop. Each visit was valued at $2,500.
Due to some scheduling conflicts, the school wasn't able to host the workshop in the 2018-19 school year. But in January, the long-awaited workshop finally took place for Evan and his excited Grade 2/3 classmates.
"They started carrying me around and cheering when they found out," Evan said.
Teacher Kristina Gilkes said the Code Mobile visit was a wonderful opportunity for her students.
"Evan was really proud to bring this in for our students and share this experience with them," she said. "We're in the age of technology, so whenever students get a chance to work with experts and get that specialized instruction, it's a great opportunity."
Ms. Gilkes's students do get to learn coding in the classroom from time to time using a program called codeSpark. The Code Mobile team had students building small strings of code in a program called Scratch.
"Scratch is made by MIT, it's a program for specifically teaching kids about code and it's available for free online there's a web browser version, you can download an offline version, and there's also an app for tablets," said Jodie Layne of Canada Learning Code. "It's all drag and drop coding, so students don't have to immediately write lines of code it's a really easy and instant way to start coding."
Students were each given a MacBook to work on the coding challenges.
"It has been fun, we were using code to make characters dance around," said student Sonny Seradilla.
These early experiences show students the possibilities of working with coding and technology.
"We want to provide activities that are fun, accessible and age-appropriate," Ms. Layne said. "This gives them a great basis for curiosity and understanding computational thinking which is really just problem solving."
Problem solving is a key skill set when it comes to digital literacy.
"Digital literacy is just as important as any other kind of literacy. The majority of the jobs that these kids will be graduating into will be using technology and coding," Ms. Layne said.
