One of three elective tracks for the summer program, the coding track was led by software engineers from Dayspring Technologies.
Starting with an introduction to programming concepts through paper exercises teaching that computers can only do exactly what you tell them, scholars were then introduced to the MIT-developed Scratch visual programming environment.
This drag-and-drop programming environment teaches the basics of programming statements such as if-then (conditionals) and loops (repeat…until). Using these mini-programs, scholars animated sprites and added music tracks.
Students then took these same skills and programmed Sphero robots. They directed these whirling balls to travel across the room, spin and flash their lights in their own dance.
During the week, scholars visited with Dayspring engineers to find out what real-life programmers do.
Code on!
