Over 30 students attended a Harvard Weekend Coding Academy at Minnetonka High School (MHS) this past weekend. Students of all abilities spent 14 hours working with two students from Harvard to learn the fundamentals of the Python coding language. In addition to learning coding techniques, students developed critical thinking, problem solving, and collaborative skills. They also met new people, collaborated, and had fun!
The event was organized by Charlie, a MHS senior interested in majoring in coding in college, who had attended a more in-depth Python coding camp at Harvard this past summer. There he heard of the opportunity to bring the experience to his own school over a weekend. He contacted The Academies at Harvard, which is a branch of Harvard Student Agencies, a non-profit business run by Harvard undergraduate students. They set up and take care of the website and registration fees, and Charlie worked with our MHS coding teachers, Nick Bahr and Theresa Hendrickson, to advertise it at school. Charlie put up signs, made morning announcements on the school news show, advertised it on social media and in the school newsletter, and enlisted the help of some parents to spread the word.
For the class two college student instructors from Harvard, Shaik, a New York City native and econ major, and Clarence, also from New York and a computer science major, flew in to Minnesota for the weekend to teach the course. Both instructors are teaching assistants in courses at Harvard. Shaik explained that instructors need to go through training and show mastery of all course content as well as have prior experience working with students (such as during the summer coding camps held on campus). Languages and frameworks that can be covered in a Weekend Academy include Scratch, HTML, CSS, Python 3, Jinja and Flask. This particular course was a series of online activities that challenged the students to solve various Python coding tasks. Students learn to use Python in steps as they problem solve and compete each stage.
For example, one student named Becca, a MHS junior, was working on Else statements, called Elif statements in Python. She was working to get the words Fizz and/or Buzz to appear in a string of numbers when multiples of 3 and 5 existed. If a number was both a multiple of 3 and 5, students needed to get Fizz Buzz to appear, but not Buzz Fizz. She was enjoying the challenge of coding these “If not this then that…” problems. Becca is currently in the AP Comp Sci Principles year long course at MHS. She’s interested in computer science for a future career and wanted to “dip my toes in and test the water.” Another attendee, Sophie, was a sophomore who also had prior coding experience and wanted to enhance her programming skills. She is currently taking AP Comp Sci 1 and knew some Python from 7th grade. She is good at coding, sees it as a growing field that will be high paying, and wants to see more women get into STEM careers.
Not all attendees were currently enrolled in coding courses. Freshmen Ketav and Will both thought it would be fun to learn to code and so they signed up. Will, who skipped a Saturday swim team practice to attend, is considering a coding career because he knows “software developers highly sought after.” I heard similar stories from other attendees like Autumn, a junior who loves metalwork and plans to be a marine. She was new to coding with no prior experience. She started at MHS last year and therefore hadn’t taken coding starting in elementary school like most of her classmates. She was working on replicating a half pyramid of blocks (like the one pictured from the Mario Bros. video game). She said it was “fascinating...somewhat difficult in a way, but once you get through it it’s pretty cool.” All of the students seemed to learn a lot and enjoyed the experience learning to code in Python.
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