Googlers teach students coding
CRANBERRY TWP — Fourth-graders at Seneca Valley's Haine Elementary School learned what it's like to work at the nation's most ubiquitous tech company.
Five Googlers — people who work at Google Pittsburgh — visited eight classes of fourth-graders at the school Tuesday morning, to inspire children to take an interest in computer science as part of Computer Science Education Week.
Tim James, a project technology manager with Google and a Cranberry resident, said Google Pittsburgh is visiting 2,000 students in 12 schools around the region to teach children about their jobs this week during CSEdWeek.
“We try to answer their questions and show them how to get started in coding,” James said.
The Googlers also visited fourth-graders at Evans City Elementary School on Monday. Rebecca Rockey, school guidance counselor, said the Google visit worked well with the school standards in career exploration.
“As a school counselor, our goal is to expose them to new career choices, both traditional and nontraditional,” she said.
In addition to explaining their careers and taking questions from students, the Googlers helped students create a Google logo using computer programming languages Scratch and CS First.
The students were engaged as they programmed their logos to change colors, make noise and come to life.
“It's cool to learn how to move things around,” said Jacob Gilbert, a fourth-grader. “If you like video games, it's good to know.”
Jacob and classmate Bhaswara Katam said they had both done coding before in class, so they were familiar with the activity. Bhaswara said she liked learning about their jobs and how Google answers questions for people who use the popular search engine.
“It's exciting,” she said.
The classroom activity showed students that coding and computer science is accessible to anyone regardless of experience or interest.
Anyone can try their hand at coding and bringing to life their own Google logo, James said, using the Hour of Code website that teaches the basics of computer coding and computer science with one-hour coding activities.
“It's a fun way to show them something new,” James said. “You don't have to be a math genius to write code.”
