Coding Club introduces kids to inner workings of games

After-school projects put students’ technology and math skills into practice

Published: April 28, 2016

By Aprille Hanson
Associate Editor

Aprille Hanson

Student Brett Dineen, 12, helps out fellow advanced coder Olivia Chambers, 12, with a question in the Christ the King Coding Club. Students learn how coding relates to the world through fun computer projects.

Aprille Hanson

Just like computer coding happens behind the scenes to make objects in a game or in other media move or make sound, students at Christ the King in Little Rock are using math and technology under the guise of projects like video game design.

The Christ the King Coding Club started in September and has had about 100 students total participate in the various coding curriculum themes offered, including game design, music and sound, art, sports and animation spread out in nine-week segments. Most of the students are third through sixth graders, though there are seventh and eighth grade students who participate as mentors or work on their own specific coding projects, said Paula Frank, computer teacher and club adviser. The club currently meets on Mondays after school until 4 p.m.

“Coding is behind the scenes. It is math; it’s math developed for the computer,” Frank said. “There’s a lot of probability and statistics, but if you called it a math club nobody would have showed up. Older ones say, ‘OK, I do need to listen in algebra, because that’s what coding is.”

When Christ the King became a Google Apps for Education school, Frank found that Google CS First created a curriculum based around coding that uses the Scratch program, created by MIT to help students learn the fundamentals of coding.

“The way they designed it, I’m here as the facilitator; there’s no extra work on my part,” Frank said. “I’m not having to teach anything because Google has written it to where you’re watching a video and then you do what the video says. A Scratch project has been started for you and you manipulate it based on what the video says.”

Google created the program for students in third to 10th grade, so it does not require the students to write the actual coding structure, Frank said.

“They still have the thought process, X takes me across the horizon and Y takes me up and down,” but factoring in special characters or brackets is not required, she said.

Fun and games = learning

Frank’s son Eric, a third-grader, said he joined the club not just because his mother is the adviser, but because he “wanted to see what it’s like, what you do, what coding’s all about.”

“You learn about X and Y and that’s really helpful in math,” he said, showing off a karate animation he manipulated. “I like sitting by my friends and seeing their projects and sharing mine with others.”

The club is broken down into various themes and projects within those themes, so students can gravitate toward the coding that interests them.

For example, one project focused on a cave surfing game and their task is to learn and put into motion how the different characters move within the game.

“They said, ‘This is like a game I play.’ ‘Yeah, now you’re learning how such and such game works,’” Frank said.

Sixth-grader Brett Dineen, 12, has taken all but one of the themes offered, making 56 projects.

“I wanted to join this club because of the game design, I thought it was a cool idea to do,” Dineen said, adding “It’s taken a few hours out of my daily life.”

While the students work off of already created projects, it gives them a chance to showcase their creativity and in Dineen’s case, humor, with his “Mortal Wombat” game.

“It’s like Mortal Combat, it took forever to do this,” Dineen said, replacing a character’s face throughout the game with a furry wombat face. “My friend Will came up with Mortal Wombat and I made a game for him.”

Dineen said animation was his favorite theme to learn.

“I learned a lot more, how to make things look like they’re moving,” he said, adding he’s now graduated to a club mentor. “I usually help some of the kids here that are beginners … I try to help them figure out their problems.”

Most of the boys are drawn to the game coding while many of the girl students in the club gravitate to music and sound.

“When we did that one, they had musical art. Based on the shape you touched (with the cursor), a certain sound would come off that shape,” so the students were tasked to coding the proper sound to the shape. Frank said it is similar to video games like “Rock Band,” where you touch something on a game instrument and it translates to the screen.

Students in this theme were tasked to create a music video and a talent show where the characters interact with each other.

Fifth-grader Peyton Lasseigne, 11, mixed coding with a photo of her favorite Pokémon characters for a project.

“I took this image and made it play music,” Lasseigne said. “It’s different to make code and make things on your own.”

Wave of the future

While the students are first and foremost having fun figuring out the coding puzzles, Frank’s goal with the club is to lay the groundwork for their future.

“If I can get their interest in third- and fourth-grade levels before their minds are closed off to coding,” it will help them be more interested in technological careers or to excel if coding becomes a required class.

Last year, Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed legislation that all public high schools offer a computer science course this school year, part of a larger national effort. The Arkansas Department of Education offered four options, including the Essentials of Computer Programming, for schools to pick from with the fifth option expected for next year and it will expand to kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms as well, according to arkansased.gov.

While Catholic schools are not bound by the requirement, Frank said computer science has been embraced in Catholic education and the future is coding classes. It is why this Google program notably shows videos on how coding is used in the world, she said.

“At least they have the concept of how that’s going to work. I hope they’ll be more open to it,” Frank said. “They’ve enjoyed it, because Google is showing them the real work and jobs that are available.”

Parents have been supportive, particularly fathers, Frank said.

“The dads are involved too. It’s not just the mom’s this time around,” Frank said. “They see the value in this.”

According to Forbes.com, the number of technology-related jobs grew by 31 percent from 2004 to 2014. Forbes also cited that The Commerce Department predicts that STEM career growth will continue outpacing other jobs through 2018.

“There are jobs out there, just there for the asking,” Frank said.

While the club is no pressure now, Frank hopes to expand the club to write code and enter coding competitions offered by entities like Google and Verizon.

“Right now it’s fun after school, no pressure,” Frank said. “Maybe when it becomes a class, they’ll say ‘Hey I already know what to do; now I have to do it for a grade.”