Coding for the careers of the future
The open-source CodeKids tool brings area public schools and Virginia Tech together with students at both levels gaining skills and experience from one another.
It might surprise you to know how Virginia Tech senior Noah Provenzano came to study computer science and physics.
“Legos were definitely the gateway,” he said.
Now, as an undergraduate research assistant in Collegiate Associate Professor Sally Hamouda’s lab in the Department of Computer Science, Provenzano is helping share those dual passions with elementary students in hopes of inspiring other kids to pursue STEM careers.
To do that, he’s led Lego-centric games that teach computer science concepts for elementary students visiting the Blacksburg campus from Roanoke arranged by the College of Engineering’s Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity.
And now, along with a large undergraduate independent study team, he’s helping build a range of digital tools that can be used by teachers to introduce mathematical and computer science concepts in Floyd County elementary schools.
Open source teaching and learning
One of those projects is CodeKids, an open-source website filled with computer-guided, interactive games that can be integrated with Virginia STEM education curriculums. Illustrated by her students and featuring the HokieBird and other images from around the New River Valley, it’s the kind of direct outreach to K-12 public schools that Hamouda has long pursued.
She did similar work as a faculty member at Rhode Island College, and now as a collegiate associate professor at Virginia Tech, she’s developing new tools for STEM education.
“I want to build a system for the school teachers to use,” Hamouda said. “And my students will get the chance to actually do something outside of their classroom. They have an actual client that they are serving instead of just doing it for the professor or the grade.”
CodeKids is currently in the pilot phase. As it’s rolled out into classrooms, public school teachers and students will provide feedback to help Hamouda’s students refine the tools. In the process, they will practice using their skills to pursue Virginia Tech’s land-grant mission and motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve).
“Not only will they see the broader impact of computer science in actual people's lives,” Hamouda said, “but they will experience how their work can make life easier and serve society.”
Living the land-grant mission
Hamouda developed the idea for the CodeKids project through a wider outreach program facilitated through Virginia Tech’s Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI), which connects liaisons from area K-12 school systems with university faculty and researchers.
Located within the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, CENI works for the purposes of “inspiring learners via large-scale events that bring learners and researchers together, connecting researchers to audiences for broader impacts of their research, building regional and statewide networks of STEM educators, and evaluating educational experiences of all kinds.”
Through CENI, Hamouda met Kim Keith, the instructional technology resource teacher with Floyd County Public Schools who also serves as a pre-K-12 liaison with Virginia Tech. Together, they went over the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning for computer science and developed the idea that became CodeKids.
Using the state curriculum, Hamouda said she and her students can design and build free, digital tools that help elementary students learn and practice grade-appropriate skills in math and computer science.
“This allows teachers of various subjects to use our tools in the classroom without having to design and build their own. That’s my end goal,” Hamouda said.
In this way, CodeKids becomes a collaboration between the public schools and university with students at both levels gaining skills and experience from one another.
Before it’s integrated into classrooms, Keith said CodeKids will be used in learning labs where students are already participating in events such as Hour of Code and other programming-related extracurricular projects.
Careers of the future
The challenge for school systems, Keith said, is that many of the careers today’s elementary students will end up working in haven’t yet been defined.
“But we do know there are sets of skills that we can make sure they attain so that they're ready,” she said. “For our students to be able to move forward in the world that will be surrounding them, they need foundations in computational thinking, whether that’s sequencing or algorithms or data sciences.”
It’s important that all students have opportunities to learn these skills in general education classes, mathematics classes, and other contexts, she said. She and Hamouda are working to ensure CodeKids and other tools can have the necessary crossover.
“This way it’s not just part of an after-school club or a specialist class that a student may or may not take,” Keith said. “This way we’re being equitable in computer science education.”
