Grisham Middle Presentation - Made w/Code

     Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with 15 middle school students about the Made w/Code project. I want to thank Mrs. Wassmuth, who is the leader of my Girl Scout troop and the teacher at Grisham Middle that presented me with this wonderful opportunity.
     I was able to speak with the students about their interests and bring it around to coding. One female student wanted to go into dancing and the arts, I was excited to show her the video of Miral Kotb, a dancer from Broadway that uses code to bring together lighting and dancing.
     Even the male students that had attended enjoyed the activities and even the videos. One male student wanted to go into music, I showed him the video of Ebony "Wondagurl" Oshunrinde and how at age 19 she was nominated for a Grammy and was featured on one of Jay-Z's albums. In the video she talked about how the music programs she used is just coding with blocks.
     After the opening and me showing them some of the videos, we went right into the activities. My favorite to always start off with is the Dancing Yeti. I use this first activity because I can explain three different simple and basic coding languages easily within the frame-set of the Yeti project.
     The Yeti itself represents HTML, or the bones. HTML is the base of any website, its what gives it structure. The next step was changing the color, foot size and hand size of the Yeti, I called this the CSS of the Yeti. CSS is the font, the font size, background color and margin spacing of any website you see and/or use. The last step was to make the Yeti dance, I used this action to describe JavaScript. The last language is used to create fancy effects.
     After the explanation, they explored the other projects and visited Scratch, another block coding site.
     I enjoyed speaking with the students and hope that they continue having fun with coding and that they are able to begin coding at school in their own Makers Space soon.

Happy Coding,

Sarah Y.