Students across the country had the opportunity to get a first-hand look at computer coding during the week of Dec. 9th. According to web design teacher Janae Helvik, the “Hour of Code” acted as a campaign to get the word out about computer science and coding in schools across the United States.
“I looked at one of the programs we did to see how many students participated and it was close to eight million and a half students that participated,” Helvik said.
West Fargo High School not only promotes coding and computer science through the “Hour of Code,” but teachers are teaming up with computer science engineers from Microsoft who are part of a program called TEALS (Technology Education And Literacy in Schools) in order to better educate students on computer science. According to Helvik, the Microsoft employees will come into the classroom and team teach their programs in the hopes that the technology and computer will teach without the help of Microsoft in the future.
“The reason T.E.A.L.S. came about is because there is such a lack of computer science majors in college and they really want to expose as many students as possible in the high school level to computer science,” Helvik said. “I think when you expose them in high school and get them to the basic level and then grow them from there, you expose them to much more of what they could do in college.”
According to the official TEALS website, the program was started in 2009 and consisted of one volunteer teacher and 12 students. Since, it has grown to include 70 schools in 12 states with 280 volunteer teachers and 3,300 students all working towards providing better education in the area of computer science.
“My short term goal is to expose more high school students to computer science and programming in a way that teaches them the fundamentals,” Microsoft volunteer Matt Sampson said. “My long term goal is to increase the number of students in North Dakota who are taking the AP Computer Science test, and then of course to see more ND students enrolling in computer science at the college level.”
The class acts as in introduction to the field of computer science to give students an idea about what it could be like to one day work in this field. Senior Megan Delaney took the class to will help her decide whether computer science is what she wants to go into as a career or even as a major next year.
“It is important because even if you don’t go to college for it or have a job, in [computer science] it is still important to have some experience with computers beyond that of word and Facebook,” Delaney said.
Although there are few students enrolled in the class at this time, especially females, the hopes is that starting this class at West Fargo High will help boost an interest for other schools in the Fargo-Moorhead area to also add classes in computer science.
“I hope to see more students involved in computer science,” Microsoft volunteer Dan Hoeger said. “Using a computer is becoming a necessity these days and people that know how to program then have an advantage when using them. In the future I see a computer programming course could be a basic requirement like math.”
As technology is becoming more and more important, students are gaining the opportunity to become better educated in the field of computer science and programming. Through the TEALS program, students at West Fargo will be able to go into the field of computer science with prior knowledge of the basics.
“Technology is one of the 21st century skills,” Helvik said. “You need technology skills. I don’t care what job you’re in, 99.9 percent of jobs that students will have in the future are going to deal with technology.”