On Jan. 23, six students four from Lucerne Elementary Secondary School, and two from Nakusp Secondary School (NSS) went toUBC Okanagan to take part in the Hour of Code.
The Hour of Code is a one-hour introduction to computer science, an initiative to get as many people as possible introduced tocoding.
In computing, code is any collection of computer instructions written using some human-readable computer language, usuallyas text.
The day started off around 9 a.m. Students were brought in, and a lecture was given on the basics of coding. After the lecture,students were split into groups and given software, a game, and were encouraged to break the game — go in, mess around,make changes to it, and just have fun.
It wasn’t just students in attendance. Mentors were also there, to assist students if they needed it.
“My role as mentor was to go around and make sure that the students were engaged in what was going on, and help them out indifferent activities,” said Michael Myhal, one of the mentors from the trip. “Unfortunately, one of the students I was helping hadhis laptop decide that this particular event was a good time to do a Windows update. He still had a great time.”
Myhal said the students took away a greater understanding of what coding is about.
One such student was Wolfgang Kostuch, of NSS.
Kostuch has been interested in coding for quite some time, and plans on going into video game design.
He believes coding will be an important aspect to the future.
“As stuff advances, it’s going to be more and more prominent to be able to know this. A lot of cars are becoming more and morecomputer operated, and it’s just going to become bigger as time goes on.”