Students at Springwood Elementary spent their penultimate day of school learning skills that might come in handy when they’re searching for jobs after college.
Representatives from Massive Academy, a training and education venture founded in Tallahassee, came to the school to teach fourth- and fifth-graders the basics of computer programming, or coding. Vincent Hunt, founder of Massive, said his group is teaching students skills that will make them invaluable members of tomorrow’s workforce.
“If we can make coding their native language, that’s a very powerful tool,” Hunt said. “By the year 2020 there will be 1 million unfillable jobs in the United States in the area of programming. How interesting would it be if Tallahassee was like a hotbed of talent for programmers?”
The kids learned programming in the school’s media center through Massive’s “One Million Lines” program, which uses interactive games that incorporate characters from popular games like “Angry Birds” and “Plants vs. Zombies.” Students like fourth-grader Calvin Rogers, 11, said they appreciated Massive’s teaching approach.
“There are so many kids who are playing so many video games,” he said. “When they see this they think, ‘Oh, I can just treat this like a video game.’ It’s basically a puzzle.”
Shelby Howard, director of communications for Massive, said the students are learning skills far outside their regular curriculum.
“They end up with an actual project they did on their own,” she said. “I think of it as kind of a therapeutic thing too. We’re sitting here and working with the kids and showing them they can be successful.”
Christopher Small, Springwood’s principal, said teaching 10- and 11-year-olds the basics of computer programming also gave the kids a break from the rigors of teaching based on Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test preparation.
Students who struggled with things like reading have actually excelled at computer programing, he said.
“Hopefully this will tie into their middle and high school education,” Small said. “We want them to continue with this.”