Fall 2014: A Look Back at AWESOME

2014-12-18

Congratulations on your continued success at Codecraft Lab! With the completion of the fall semester we have seen our amazing kids take on not just an Hour of Code, but months of dedicated learning and creating! Before we get back to the future ahead, let’s take a look at what has been accomplished in the last few months of 2014. New and experienced Codecrafters alike tackled problem solving puzzles. Using drag and drop code blocks they quickly gained more experience with the power of sequential thinking, loops, and the basic structure of JavaScript. Congratulations to Justin and Hakeem for finishing their 20 lesson challenge in record time!! Several other students have their eye on the prize here too: Nakeya, Gianni, and Lucas! Take some time during winter break to finish up and claim your reward in January. Universities all over the world use drag and drop platforms to teach the basics of computer science, and we know why Using this same kind of tool, a collection of our very creative young programmers persisted through many iterations to create crazy complex neoclassic games, out-of-the-box multi-level mazes, beautiful messages of thanks, instructional teaching tools, and heartfelt stories of inspiration. If you think Scratch is easy, or “just” a game, think again! This group is utilizing variables and creating functions to meet their project requirement. Still others in the Lab have put their minds, powers of perception, and typing skills to the ultimate accuracy test. Taking on HTML, CSS, JavaScript or Python, kids at Codecraft Lab are pushing the boundaries of expectation. We have a cohort of students who are experiencing professional development environments and building web pages and web apps full of things interesting to them! From music reviews to views of the galaxy and assistive technology apps to 3D game design, there is no shortage of excitement for finding a digital voice and using it. Being ready for a world that’s being eaten by software, these kids are no doubt the leaders of tomorrow. We are SO proud to call them friends and coders!