The Hour of Code 2016

This week, I had the pleasure of spending 2 days at my daughter's Boston public school, the Philbrick Elementary School. I was helping the school's fantastic science teacher Erin Flynn to teach the Hour of Code for Computer Science Education Week, celebrated on Grace Hopper's birthday.

Erin and Charis

This was my fourth year teaching the Hour of Code, which coincides with the program's existence. Here are my 2014 and 2015 recaps, which detail the drag-and-drop program Skitch. You can view all of the code-based games on the Hour of Code's website. Thanks to my employer RueLaLa for making this opportunity happen with their volunteer days program!

Every year, I am astounded by the students' boundless energy and impressed by the teaching staff who keeps them engaged on a daily basis. This year, we worked on the students' ability to solve difficult problems, and talked about the determination and perseverance required to end up at the correct solution.

Although it's exhausting to teach programming to 170 students in just 2 days, the Hour of Code is a rewarding experience every time and I am so grateful to be a part of it. This year was especially gratifying when my daughter came home after day 1 and we spent 2 hours coding on a Monster High platform from code.org before I finally convinced her it was bedtime. I am so proud of my little coder and all of the wonderful students at the Philbrick. It's really special to be able to have lunch and attend recess with my daughter two days in a row, and a great side benefit to this volunteer experience!

Field Trip to the Boston Nature Center

Last week, I had the pleasure of taking Mr. Berg's 2nd grade Philbrick Elementary School class to the Boston Nature Center (BNC).

Ms. Maciunas and Ms. Brown assisted us on the walk over to the BNC, about a quarter mile from the school. The students did well maintaining a safe, straight line.

Once we arrived, Andrew and Chelsea from the BNC greeted us and went over the day's planned activities, including collecting bugs in the meadow and harvesting the community garden.

We broke into 2 groups and headed toward the garden. On the way, we spotted bees pollenating a flower and passed several beehives.

In the garden, Andrew showed the class how to harvest green zebra sausage tomatoes.

The tomatoes were delicious!

Next Andrew asked the class to identify the parts of the plant.

Then it was time to switch groups. Off to the meadow we went to sweep for insects!

Before long, it was lunchtime, a picnic enjoyed outdoors. Afterward, the children viewed the insects they'd gathered and illustrated and labeled a drawing and wrote about them.

Finally, it was time to work together as a class to build a structure. Although the scene was a bit reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, everyone successfully collaborated to build a huge fort.

GoldieBlox with the Boys and Girls Club of Boston

"When a door closes, a window opens" may be a cliche, but it's remarkably apt in a recent project I had the pleasure to run.

I applied for and received a grant from the Mitchell Institute in 2014 to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the event, so I wrote a proposal to redirect my Mitchell Institute award in another endeavor. At first, I searched for a comparable event with lower travel costs. No such opportunities presented themselves. Days later, I learned of the tragic death of a local young woman, Dawnn Jaffier. 

I was heartbroken that my city had lost such a bright life, a woman who had dedicated her time and talent to making a positive difference with the city’s at-risk youth. I wondered what I could do, in her honor, to help Boston children in my unique way. I thought about my daughter’s nearly unlimited access to toys and games that stimulate her interest in different topics. Most notably, we have been using an engineering game called GoldieBlox specifically designed for girls to introduce engineering concepts such as levers, wheels, and pulleys.

I asked the Mitchell Institute to re-direct their generous funding to purchase the full array of GoldieBlox engineering toys for the urban Boston locations of the Boston Boys and Girls Clubs, including the Hennigan branch where Dawnn worked as a mentor and afterschool coordinator. I recently delivered these gifts in person to visit the staff and children in the afterschool programs to explain the game and tell them why I love working in technology. GoldieBlox generously offered me wholesale pricing to stretch the grant money a lot further. My company EMC provided me with volunteer time off days to complete the project, and profiled my STEM educational outreach efforts in a video for International Women's Day (which I highlighted in this blog post). 

I was so excited to bring my passion for technology to Boston students who might not otherwise have access. I’ve been a resident of Boston for over a decade, and still live in the area. I hope that by seeing a local community parent who works in technology, local students will see this as a potential career path.

First I visited the Charlestown club. The girls and I had a fantastic time assembling the toys and learning about gravity and mechanics. The teams built a dunk tank, zip line, and spinning wheel machine in minutes flat. 

 

 

Here are some short videos of the toys.

Last week I went to the Sumner club. The 4th grade girls were very cooperative. A memorable comment came from one of the girls who was impressed by my iPhone 6, which I used to take many of these photos. She asked me about it and I mentioned that it came from my company so that I could conduct business on it. She looked at me with surprise and asked, as a savvy young student, "Do they also pay for the data plan?" When I told her they did, she replied, "I want to work for EMC!"

 

                        

I went to the Hennigan club today. They plan to use the GoldieBlox kits for an after school engineering club for girls every Thursday. 

 

The Hour of Code

Last year was my first year participating in the Hour of Code. I went to my daughter's preschool class and taught the kids basic programming via an iPad game called My Robot Friend. We had a blast freeze dancing and coding!

If your child enjoys this type of game, then check out the coding board game Robot Turtles, which is based on a similar concept.

This year, I wanted to try something different. Then I stumbled upon this USA Today article mentioning a new coding game using the characters from Frozen. The code is an easy, intuitive drag-and-drop user interface called Blockly. It's similar to the MIT-developed Scratch GUI. I figured that my daughter's kindergarten class would love that, so I emailed her science teacher to see if we could give it a try. She was game, and I was excited! The game itself is so fun that I continued playing long after my daughter went to bed.

The kids had so much fun! We began with a quick demo on the SmartBoard.

Then, we let them try it individually on their iPads. They mastered several levels in a matter of minutes, and ended the session with a freeze dance game to Let It Go.

My company, EMC, thought this was so cool that they profiled my volunteer efforts in a video for International Women's Day 2015! More here: http://charismama.blogspot.com/2015/03/my-15-minutes-of-fame.html.

I'm so grateful to my company for giving us 3 volunteer days off so that I can spend time in my community working on fun projects like this.

It's not too late to bring the Hour of Code to your school! Check it out online at Hour of Code.

Here are some additional photos from the Philbrick 3rd grade's hour of code.

Edited to add additional photos from the Philbrick 4th grade's hour of code.