Newtown High School (NHS) hosted a Computer Science Night for Reed Intermediate School students December 10, as announced by NHS computer science teacher Kristin Violette.

Violette and students Julia Scataglini and Sam Staubly planned the event and NHS Computer Science Honor Society students helped run the evening.

“The Reed kids were excited to be there, and the high school [Computer Science] Honor Society students were well prepared and looking forward to teaching the younger students. It was quite beautiful to watch,” Violette reflected in an e-mail following the event.

The event was held during Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), which ran December 6 through December 12.

CSEdWeek is an annual call to action to inspire kindergarten to twelfth grade students to learn computer science, advocate for equity in computer science education, and celebrate the contributions of students, teachers, and partners to the field, according to a recent release from the State Department of Education.

According to Violette, the Reed students rotated through three stations, all aimed to help teach computer science. The first station was a block coding station, “designed and led by Julia Scataglini. This was an unplugged programming activity in which students used blocks to create different algorithms. One algorithm determined if there would be a snow day or not based on certain conditions,” Violette explained.

Violette described the second station, a robot station, which was designed by Sam.

“Sam created a lesson for these students that included a demonstration of his self-designed and self-built robot as well as a lesson using the Edison robots. Students learned about different sensors a robot uses to move around and detect its environment,” she said.

“We are grateful to Peter Bernson (STEM teacher at Reed) who met with Sam and I and helped us to appropriately gauge our lesson for the fifth and sixth graders. He graciously lent us the robots for the session. We are even more grateful for the Newtown High School PTSA who just awarded us a grant to purchase 15 robots so we will be able to continue to mentor the younger students in computer science,” Violette added.

The third station, an image decoding station, which was led by Anthony Crisci and Juan Mendez, had students learn how black and white images are made up of pixels that are converted to binary code. Students also learned how that binary code can be compressed using Run Length Encoding, according to Violette.

Violette also asked participants for comments about how the night went. Those comments are included below.

Reed student Kenneth Miller said, “I learned about how computers process images, block coding, and how robots sense if there is an object in front of them. It was awesome and I can’t wait for the next one.” His mother Christine Miller said as a parent she was grateful for the opportunity, and “This is exactly the kind of hands-on learning he craves. It was so fantastic to have older students involved — just an overall win!”

Reed student Micah Houston said, “I think it went really well. I had tons of fun learning about computer science. My favorite activity was when we got to play with the Edison robots.” His father, Zach Houston, said he thinks it is important to empower students and the Computer Science Night “did just that.”

Fun And Inspirational

Reed student Lucas Cabrera was particularly impressed by the coded robot cars, and his mother, Laura Cabrera, said the high school students did a “wonderful job” sharing computer science with the younger students.

Other Reed students called the night interesting and fun, inspirational, a great time, and “an awesome night.”

In an e-mail following the event, Sam described the night as “a resounding success.”

“I was in charge of running the robotics station, where we introduced the kids to programming robots by coding the little robot cars to avoid hitting obstacles. I could see smiles on their faces as they watched the cars run the code we wrote together,” he observed. “It seemed like they were able to grasp the basics of programming that we went over, seeing the process of writing code statements using block code, and many of them had already thought of new ways to change the code to make the cars smarter, like stopping the cars from driving off the table.”

Sam said it is important to teach computer science to people at as young of an age as possible.

“And I feel this event was a very important first step in accomplishing this. Many of the kids said they just began using these same robots (Edison robots) in their STEM class at Reed school, and were excited to use them again. This shows me they enjoy computer science so far, which is awesome to hear, and I hope more students will have this positive image of computer science moving forward,” he said.

Fellow NHS Computer Science Honor Society student Max Luci-Bernard said the event was productive.

“Everything about it was sublime,” Max said. “From when the children were in awe from Sam’s robot expertise or when they were trying to decipher a puzzling code with Julia’s group. Just from observing another group’s activity I could see that all of their little fifth grade brains were working hard and trying to absorb everything we threw at them that night. I can’t wait to hold more [Computer Science] nights in the future because I know for sure that these kids loved it.”

Juan said he is proud of what the group accomplished with the Computer Science Night.

NHS Computer Science Honor Society member Siddharth Vakacherla said it was really amazing to see all the kids, many of whom already had a surprising amount of knowledge about CS, putting together codes and learning about robots and other things.

“I think that it’s very important that they be exposed to computer science and all of its potential at an early age so that they can foster a greater understanding of it, because technology and computers are already such an integral part of our daily lives, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. An understanding of how and why different pieces of technology work allows them to influence the future,” Vakacherla said.

Education Reporter Eliza Hallabeck can be reached at eliza@thebee.com.