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The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

Joy of Computing takes field trip to UC Berkeley campus

Joy of Computing takes field trip to UC Berkeley campus

Computer science teacher Nathan Mattix brought 25 of his Joy of Computing students to UC Berkeley’s Computer Science Education Day (CSEd) on Dec. 8 to help excite them about programming. The event, attended by more than 500 students around the Bay Area, showcased Cal’s engineering computer science program.

Because the Joy of Computing class is based off of the UC Berkeley class, the field trip closely related to the class’s curriculum Mattix said.

COMP SCI“It’s aimed at trying to excite people who normally aren’t excited,” Mattix said. “The students that go actually come back excited about programming,”

In the morning, Cal students and professors presented projects of the engineering and computer science programs. After lunch they engaged in unplugged, activities to learn about computer science at the university level.

“I got a new insight on what someone really studies when you study computer science,” junior Kelsey Fennell said. “It broadened my perspective of computer science because they showed me you can do so much with it.”

The Friday before CSEd Week, the computer science department held the Piedmont Maker’s Faire in the PHS Student Center aimed at introducing students to programming. The event, held for elementary and middle school students, informed the Piedmont community on the Hour of Code and Code.org, Mattix said.

Mattix asked senior Connick Shields to attend as a mentor to the younger students. Shields presented a Minecraft plugin he had worked on with Chris de Firmian.

“A plugin is a compiled section of code that you add into a folder that extends the function of the original game,” Shields said. “Mine added a mini game function to let players battle each other and it added special physics conditions.”

At the social, Ali Partovi, one of the founders of Code.org, spoke to the audience about the Hour of Code and the importance of student coding.

Code.org is an organization that promotes education among students in elementary through high school, Mattix said. It also promotes the Hour of Code, which is an initiative by CSEdWeek to introduce computer programming to 10 million students and encourage them to learn programming,” according to tynker.com. Piedmont has become more active in the Code.org community in the past three years, Mattix said.

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