Tiger Tech Happenings: Hour of Code & STREAM Night

This week was a blur as I finished up two graduate courses at the University of Richmond and helped host two events, one at each of my schools. However, the reaction from students and parents made all the planning time well worth it! At both events, Hour of Code and STREAM Night, students participated in learning opportunities that aren't part of their everyday experiences.

Hour of Code
On Tuesday we had approximately 80 of our 300 JGES students stay after school for our second annual Hour of Code. Mrs. Churchill, our librarian, hosted the event in the library and we used resources from code.org. We recommended different activities from the site based on each student's coding experience. Once everyone was checked in and logged into their computers, there was a buzz in the air. Our hour easily could have lasted two as most students were not ready to shut down once parents started arriving. The pictures below speak for themselves as students work together to write their code in a comfortable environment. Check out this video created by Mrs. Churchill for more pictuers.

STREAM Night
Staff members at HCES planned a variety of stations related to a STREAM field to engage students and their families. Each family had an opportunity to pick four of the stations that sounded most interesting to them and then were given a schedule of three stations to visit. The stations ranged from creating paper glider boats to balloon towers to coding. All of the station resources can be found here. Though the cold raining weather kept some families away, a great time was had by all! It was great to see families engage in such a creative and fun way.