Crestline coding club a hit

Friday afternoon finds many kids playing outside, relaxing with a book or resting after a long week. Not so with 25 Crestline Elementary students who hurry down to the media center to work on their coding projects.

They eagerly log on to Scratch, a coding language developed by MIT that enables students to program their own stories, animations and games. Learning to program looks as simple as connecting blocks; color-coded blocks that resemble LEGOs tell the character (also called a sprite) to move, make noise, talk in a speech bubble or whatever the programmer chooses.

Students begin slowly programming their sprite to walk across the stage, play a drum beat a certain number of times, say something and blink. More complex challenges teach students how to repeat commands, utilize knowledge of angles and the X and Y coordinates to draw shapes and even interact with a user.

Fifth-grader Landon Friedman has been Scratching since third grade and is known as the Genius Gaming Group on Scratch.  He has created many intricate games that take weeks to create and are most interesting to play. He draws all the backgrounds, characters and objects with meticulous detail; his Fabulous Farm game includes letters delivered to a mailbox, bills you must pay to continue playing, and even tiny weeds in the field. Landon incorporates music, designs graphics and plans all the activities for his elaborate games.

Mia Dunlap, another fifth-grader, is known for her pixelated drawings of characters and ability to draw anything. Coding gives her a natural outlet for her drawings; she draws lots of sprites and backgrounds that other Crestline coders use in their games and animations. 

Many of the students enroll in Code Club because they want to make an app or create games such as Minecraft or a chasing game. It’s all possible, but the kids are surprised by the critical thinking and problem-solving required to program the sprite to perform as you want.

“Coding requires precision, but it’s disguised as something fun, such as programming a butterfly to land on a dog’s nose,” says Susan Dulin, the club’s sponsor. “You have to know how to move the butterfly, where to move it, and program the dog to react.  A tiny animation takes lots of thought, trial and error, revision and finally, gleeful satisfaction.  There are lots of ‘oohs and ahhs’ each week in the lab.”

Collaboration makes programming more fun. A group of fifth-grade boys and girls are working on “an awesome game,” according to Miller Knott.

Several fourth-grade girls have teamed up to program a Finch (a small manatee-looking robot) to draw, move and make noises on command.  

Code Club at Crestline is loud, fun and full of learning.

-Submitted by Susan Dulin.