On Monday and Tuesday, December 3rd and 4th, students in Mr. Georgsson’s Seventh Grade Business Education classroom took part in what has been dubbed “the largest educational event in history”.

Hour of Code is an initiative to get students to spend an hour of time learning to program, as part of national Computer Science Education Week (December 3-7, 2018).  The Hour of Code is a global movement by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries through a one-hour introduction to computer science and computer programming.

The hour of code activity in Mr. Georgsson’s classroom had students create their own digital dance party!  Amazon and Code.org partnered for this year’s Hour of Code as part of Amazon’s Future Engineer program, a comprehensive kindergarten-to-career program that works to inspire, educate, and train 10 million children and young adults each year from underrepresented communities to pursue careers in the fast-growing field of computer science.

Right from the start, students were very engaged due to the integration of trendy music and a fun theme that had everyone bobbing their heads to the music and mimicking their sprites as they danced in the play space on their screens.  Each explored a series of steps while they were exposed to increasingly challenging programming concepts.  Each step would build upon the previous one until students had the knowledge necessary to complete their “Dance Party” at the end of the exercise.  The final stage involved students testing their programs and mimicking the dances on their screens.

At the end of the programming phase, students walked around the room and enjoyed each other’s creations!  At the end of the activity, students gave enthusiastic reviews asking for more activities of the same vein.