State superintendent joins Oak Mountain Elementary students to celebrate Hour of Code

Students at Oak Mountain Elementary School are getting ready to learn coding and joined with state schools Superintendent Tommy Bice today to celebrate the effort.

The school will participate in Hour of Code, a global event where students participate in a one-hour coding activity, sometime between Dec. 7 and Dec. 13. The event’s goal is to teach students the importance of learning computer science.

Third-graders from Jennifer Northrup’s class at Oak Mountain led an Hour of Code kickoff assembly this morning, including skits that they wrote themselves. 

Northrup’s class started coding in October, and she said participating in the Hour of Code is important because of technology’s role in our everyday lives.

“I think that’s our future,” she said.

The students presented information on coding through skits that demonstrated how coding is used, including a skit based on the video game character Mario. They also showed a video that included well-known people such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg discussing the importance of computers and learning coding.

Bice also spoke to the students about the importance of coding.

“I think one of the things you see from the skit and from the video is that coding is all around us, and sometimes we don’t even realize it,” Bice said. “Coding is one of those things that we want all students to have exposure to before you get to be an adult because it’s something you might find you enjoy.”