Nine-year-old Jayden Cortez generally plays Minecraft at home while tinkering around on his iPad.
On Thursday, the Chiefess Kapi‘olani Elementary School third-grader got to learn the concepts used to actually create the popular video game — by programming movements into a simulated piece of a Minecraft world himself.
“This is kind of brand-new to me but it’s fun,” Jayden said, hunched over his laptop screen as he dragged and dropped “blocks” of instructions — the basics of block-based coding — into the program workspace. “You get to play Minecraft, do new things in the game and also learn.”
Kapi‘olani is one of 14 Hawaii Island public schools participating this week in the Hour of Code, a nationwide movement designed to expose youth to computer science, “demystify” coding and forge student interest in the field at an early age.
Hour of Code began four years ago. Thousands of schools throughout the country now participate. It takes place each year during Computer Science Week, which runs through Sunday this year.
Participating students learn coding through a range of free tutorials provided by the nonprofit Code.org.
“(Computer science) is almost like a basic skill now for a lot of future professions,” said Kapi‘olani technology coordinator Jonette Fujitake, who led Thursday’s Hour of Code activities. “So the goal is to springboard or kick-start this whole idea of computer science and to get them excited about it. The hope with this program is that we continue. They are going to have to have this skill. We want to get them exposed now so they’ll get comfortable and … equalize that playing field when they’re older.”
“And the students are so into it,” Fujitake added. “They think they’re playing, but what they don’t realize is they’re creating lines of block code.”
For Hawaii students interested in computer science, the job outlook is bright: The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the need for computer and information research scientists will grow 19 percent from 2016-26, which is “much faster than the average for all occupations.”
In Hawaii, there are 1,169 open computing jobs compared with 155 computer scientist graduates in 2015, according to Code.org. Nationally, there were 59,581 graduates in 2015 compared to 527,169 jobs available.
The average wage for a computing job in Hawaii is $80,734 compared with the state’s overall average wage of $49,430, Code.org said.
Nationally, just 40 percent of schools teach computer science, however, and in Hawaii just 12 schools offered AP Computer Science in the 2015-16 school year, according to Code.org.
At Kapi‘olani, technology is a focus of the school’s academic plan, Fujitake said. The school currently features a one-to-one technology device ratio for each child. Fujitake said students picked up coding concepts “extremely easily” and seemed to have gleaned additional skills through the tutorials, such as teamwork and problem solving.
“You can just see the gratification when they’ve conquered whatever the problem is they’re trying to figure out,” Fujitake said.
For Jearisha Souleng, 8, coding was a new but exciting endeavor. She and classmate Kaimi Andrews-Facchini, 8, laughed as they dragged blocks of instructions into the workspace portion of their screens Thursday, causing characters to move when code was “run.”
“It’s a little difficult and hard but fun,” Jearisha said, adding her favorite part is “just playing the game.”
“I’ve (played Minecraft) before on my mom’s phone,” Kaimi added. “I think this is fun because it shows you how to explore and learn.”
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
