Learning 21st Century Martial Arts at CoderDojo

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Maya Peterson

A lesson at CoderDojo.

Benjamin Angell, Staff Writer

Every other Saturday, Falmouth Academy students and community members fill the computer lab for CoderDojo. CoderDojo is a movement of volunteers offering free programming classes worldwide.  At Falmouth Academy, this movement is led by Ms. Borden, supported by a team of community volunteers and student assistants Maya and Soren Peterson, Michael Zitomer, and Ben Mihalovich. The movement creates a space for anyone ages seven to seventeen to dive into coding. This dojo runs two tracks for beginner and intermediate programmers. Beginners learn Scratch, a simple, powerful block-based language, perfect for younger coding “ninjas” and a fun way to code without worrying about more complex colons, spaces, and syntax errors. Intermediates learn Python, which is a bit more complex than Scratch, but still produces amazing results. Python is a coding language that is used to make games and applications. In CoderDojo, using Python, ninjas can create anything from role-playing games to animated turtles that move at random speeds. 

Maya Peterson
Scratch programmers at CoderDojo.

When you walk up the stairs to the computer lab, a low level of chatter can be heard from down the hall.  Some amazing projects have already been created at CoderDojo. Will Palmer, a seventh-grader at FA, created an enormously frustrating gravity platform game with Scratch. At the end of CoderDojo, coders have the chance to share their work and receive feedback from their peers.  The work on display is entertaining and inspirational.