Technology is already a part of every aspect of our lives and it will only continue to become more integrated. I believe that everyone should try learning to code.

Computer Science Academy Facilitator Tim Shipley says coding helps students learn to be better critical thinkers and problem solvers.

“I think students that are able to do that have a huge advantage over students who don’t,” Shipley said.

Shipley elaborates on how coding improves a student’s problem solving ability, explaining that each problem in a program is broken down into smaller parts, using the creation of an application for students getting parking passes as an example.

“We have to be able to log on. We have to be able to identify who the student is. How are we going to do that? Once the students log on, we have to know what year they are… It’s a series of smaller steps and problems,” Shipley said, “At the end [the problems are] all solved. You put them all together. You have one application or one system, or one solution that works for the initial problem you started off with. That’s going to be applicable to anything you decide to do.”

Computer Science Co-Facilitator Andrew Meile says coding can help with confidence and creativity when working on harder programs.

“It’s that awesome feeling of: ‘I have worked really hard on something that I couldn’t figure out’ and then all of a sudden it clicks and we do figure it out. That’s a really cool feeling to see students experience.” Meile said.

Meile adds that even knowing how computers work will be beneficial in any job, even if it’s not in the tech industry.

“Anything you’re going to do as a professional is going to have something, somewhat related to working on computers,” Meile Said.

For those who are hesitant to start coding, Shipley’s advice is to start small, and use resources around the web.

“Scratch is a fun little block coding [website], you don’t really have to know text based coding to write some pretty fun games,” Shipley said.

Along with Scratch, Meile recommends code.org, codeHS, code academy, CodeCombat and freecodecamp.org.

“All of these websites have free options for learning… just a wealth of knowledge for anybody that just wants to do a little programming, not necessarily structured but just kind of dabbling,” Meile said.

Additionally, Meile shoots down the misconception that coding is only for men.

“One of the things I found in 10 years of teaching is: some of my very best students are females… every time I’ve had classes with multiple girls in there, they have absolutely flourished,” Meile said.

Shipley adds that Olathe South hosts a ‘Girls who Code’ club.

“It meets on Thursday nights from 6:00 to 8:00. [We] have three women who [facilitate], one’s a professor of computer science at Mid America and two others are in the industry; their job is software [development],” Shipley said.

For more information about coding, contact Mr. Meile at [email protected].