The Coding Space Blog

A Look Back on Summer 2021 at Camp Coding Space

10/5/2021

Summer may be over and fall classes underway, but we wanted to take a minute to reflect on the fun we had at Camp Coding Space this past summer and the incredible campers who joined us each week.
From June to August, we had a blast running a second successful year of Camp Coding Space Online. Campers demonstrated tremendous creativity and commitment as they built projects in Scratch and JavaScript using our online learning environment, and we witnessed some amazing moments, like one of our campers proudly sharing his creation with his younger brother.

We also loved the shout-outs!

In addition to our online camp, we were thrilled to return to our Brooklyn location for one week of in-person camp in July. Campers participated in STEM activities, outdoor fun, and of course, lots of coding! Some of our favorite activities included Feats of Balance, where campers engineered structures out of cups and popsicle sticks to suspend as many blocks as possible over empty space, and Cypher Wheels, where campers created secret codes for encrypting and decrypting messages.

And let’s not forget about the return of The Coding Space Cup! Whether online or in person, our campers worked hard to earn points for their teams and cheered each other on regardless of the winner. In the end, whether it was Team Liskov or Team Dijkstra with the trophy, our campers were proud of all that they accomplished — and so were we!

Thanks to all of our kids, families, and counselors who joined us over the summer. We can’t wait to see you next year!

9 Hispanic Leaders in STEM

9/26/2021

Latinx workers remain underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce. At The Coding Space, as our program grows, we hope to increase awareness of these inequities and use our scholarship program, teacher-training program, and other tools at our disposal to bolster the immense talent of the Latinx community and champion their voices that are so important to advancing our field.
In honor of Hispanic History Month, we’re celebrating a handful of the fearless Hispanic individuals who have impacted STEM fields far and wide. Whether they contributed to the development of medicine, made strides in mathematics, or expanded the study of space exploration, we honor the wide ranging accomplishments of these game-changing Hispanic American champions.

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Angeles Elena Van Ryzin: Top Engineer at Kia

Angeles Elena Van Ryzin used her passion and expertise in Mechanical Engineering to level up the design, ease of use, and fuel efficiency of the Kia Telluride. To make these critical improvements to the Telluride, Van Ryzin traveled the globe, overseeing every stage of the work — all while pregnant! Originally from Mexico, she strives to show the world that “Being a woman is not a limitation to do any work.”

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Ellen Ochoa: the First Female Hispanic-American Astronaut

Ellen Ochoa became an astronaut in 1991 and flew in four shuttle missions after earning her master's degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Among the many accomplishments in her life, she was the first Hispanic director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and she co-invented three patents in optics, object recognition and image processing.

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Carlos Juan Finlay: Groundbreaking Cuban Epidemiologist

Carlos Juan Finlay was a Cuban physician who first linked yellow fever to mosquitoes in 1881. His discovery saved millions of lives, despite massive skepticism from his critics. Not only did yellow fever pose an enormous threat to populations living in the tropics, it also disrupted tropical economies by obstructing shipping. Thanks to Finlay’s work, yellow fever was wiped out of Cuba as well as Panama, enabling engineers to finally complete the Panama Canal.

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Edaena Salinas: Up-and-Coming Feminist Tech Star

While climbing the ladder as a successful engineer at Microsoft, Salinas, originally from Mexico, created a podcast, The Women in Tech Show, about the actual achievements of women in tech, “not what it feels like to be a woman in technology”. She strives to open doors for other Latinas to explore careers in science and technology by showcasing interviews with female-identifying leaders in technology, science, research, and entrepreneurship.

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Alissa Chavez: Prodigy Inventor

Alissa Chavez invented and patented “The Hot Seat”, a device that prevents babies and children who’ve been left alone in cars from dying of heat strokes, at the age of 17. She has since launched her small business Assila (her name spelled backwards), where she continues to work towards creating more products that protect children.

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Patricia Valoy: STEMinist for a Better Tomorrow

Patricia Valoy studied civil engineering at Columbia University before working as an engineer and project manager in NYC. Here, she experienced discrimination which led her to become a STEMinist, a feminist in the male-dominated world of STEM. She has since dedicated her career to feminist diversity consulting and tours the nation speaking on gender bias in the industry, STEM outreach to underrepresented groups, and working in male-dominated fields. She often writes about the discrimination she experienced from the office to the construction site on platforms like Everyday Feminism and has even been featured on the cover of the Washington Post.

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Stephanie Castillo: Entrepreneur for Equity

Stephanie Castillo, whose parents are Mexican immigrants, has dedicated her professional career to filling the diversity gap in STEM. She created Latina Girls Code (LGC), a Chicago-based program that provides education and resources to young Latinas through workshops, hackathons and weeks-long programs on technology languages and entrepreneurial skills.

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Mario Molina: Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner

Born in Mexico, Mario Molina had a love of math and science from a young age, performing madcap science experiments with his aunt, who was also a chemist. Among his many accomplishments, Molina is best known for his Nobel Prize winning work exposing the threat that chlorofluorocarbons pose to the ozone layer. Over the course of his life, Molina received more than thirty honorary degrees and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

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Albert Baez: Inventor of the X-ray Reflection Microscope
Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez was working as a graduate student at Stanford when he co-invented the X-ray reflection microscope, which is still in use in medicine today and was the first microscope that allowed scientists to examine living cells. Though Baez was offered multiple highly-paid positions working for defense departments, he was a staunch pacifist and instead chose to dedicate his life to education and humanitarianism.

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Hispanic Heritage Month is a great opportunity to learn more about the history and diverse cultures while supporting Hispanic-owned businesses and upliftingHispanic voices in other industries and spaces.

The Magic of Socratic

8/23/2021

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” —Socrates

We often talk about our use of the Socratic method at The Coding Space. Why? Because it is integral to what we believe about learning: that it’s most effective when students are given space and time to forge their own connections. Our teachers are not pitchers of knowledge filling the cups of our students. Instead, our teachers act as stand-ins for the inner critical voice that we want our students to develop and eventually use to solve problems on their own.

We do this by helping students see problems from new angles, inviting them to look more closely, and asking questions about their work so they can learn to do the same. It’s not about how we as teachers believe they should solve a problem; it’s about how they think they should solve it -- and what they learn as they experiment with their own ideas. By not dispensing easy answers, we are encouraging them to practice critical thinking, teaching them how to synthesize information, and holding space for them to make deeper and more personalized connections than they would if we fed them solutions.

New students are sometimes confused by this methodology. Because of the traditional education system to which many have become accustomed, students often come to us with no conception of self-driven learning. They are so used to depending entirely on their teachers that they don’t understand their own innate resourcefulness. Our primary objective in using the Socratic method is to teach the very opposite, proving to students that they contain valuable wisdom and intuition about the world and have what it takes to devise their own solutions.

Below is an example of how this might play out in our classrooms, as a student tries to make a ghost hide and show every two seconds in our classic Untutorial, Ghostbusters:

Step 2: Make the ghost hide & show every 2 seconds

Student: “I have no clue what to do.”
Teacher: “Can you re-read the step for me? Are there any words that stand out?”
Student: “Show, hide, 2 seconds”
Teacher: “Do you see any blocks that would make it show or hide?”
Student: [Student looks through blocks] “Okay, I got it to hide, but how do I make it come back?”
Teacher: “What do you mean by ‘come back’?
Student: “Make it show.”
Teacher: “Do you see a block that would make it show?”
Student: “Okay, I found it. But it’s happening too fast.”
Teacher: “What’s happening too fast?”
Student: “It’s not showing for long enough.”
Student: “How would you make it show longer?”
Student: “Wait 2 seconds?”
Teacher: “Yes! Can you find a block that does that?”

The magic of Socratic is that, in the above example, the teacher has actually told the student nothing. By asking questions and modeling a thought process, the student came to the solution all on their own. Once they learn they have this power, the sky’s the limit.
We strongly believe in this method and all of our teachers go through an intensive training process to ensure we are inspiring all of our students. Learn more about our teaching philosophy or contact us to learn more about our classes so that your child can grow and learn with us!

Welcome to Fall Semester 2021

8/6/2021

Dear Coding Space Family,

We are so thrilled to welcome you back in person this fall! With locations opening back up in New York on the Upper East Side (we’ve moved!), Park Slope, and Long Island and a new location in Westchester, we can’t wait to see new and old faces and code together once again. With experience running an in-person test class over the summer, we are confident in our COVID-19 safety measures to ensure the safety of our teachers and students as we reopen.

We’re also very excited to continue our virtual program. Having offered online classes all year, we’re proud of the program we’ve created and its multitude of benefits. Utilizing Zoom’s multiple screen sharing feature, our online teachers have up-close access to every line our students code like never before. Paired with carefully designed hands-on-activities that promote social interaction and learning in new ways, our online classes truly offer a robust alternative to in-person, with the convenience of coding from home.

Additionally, we’re delighted to introduce Intermediate classes this fall. Since The Coding Space started, we’ve divided classes into Beginner and Advanced, knowing full-well that there is tremendous progress that happens in between. By offering an Intermediate option, we’ll be giving our parents deeper insight into where our students are in their coding journeys and teachers a closer view of the milestones our students have reached.

With new features added to our online learning platform, engaging hands-on activities, and captivating challenges to boot, we are more than ready to bring our students premium education, ignite their curiosity, and facilitate their joy in learning this school year.

Have a great rest of your summer, and we’ll see you in September!

Sincerely,

Maddy Carter
Managing Director

Scott Levenson
Managing Partner

The Coding Space Share Week: Building Resilience Through Celebration

7/27/2021

At The Coding Space, every semester ends with a special event—Share Week! During Share Week, students showcase their hard work from the semester by testing each other’s projects, seeing each other’s progress, and celebrating their accomplishments.

By encouraging students to feel pride in what they’ve learned, what they’ve made, and what skills they’ve acquired, Share Week reinforces the essential lesson that learning is its own reward. Building grit is a key part of our pedagogy at The Coding Space, and nothing reinforces grit more than learning to take authentic pride in your efforts—regardless of external accolades. While awards, certificates, and praise can be great ways to encourage students, it’s even better to teach students to celebrate the internal reward of hard work itself.

No matter the platform or skill level, each project is as unique as the student who created it. See below for a few of the many examples of creativity and passion.

Wednesday Advanced: Tomato Squasher
Goal: Move the tomato cannon left and right with arrow keys and shoot down as many watermelons as you can in 30 seconds.

Friday Young Beginner: Animal Art
Goal: Use your mouse to draw with various animals and press different keys for cool effects

Monday Beginner GirlCode: Animal Piano
Goal: Click each dinosaur to make them play a custom beat

Can you tell we love celebrating our student’s accomplishments? Join one of our upcoming coding classes to start creating today!

A Sneak Peek at My Coding Space

7/27/2021

Last summer, The Coding Space built a learning management system to capture our students’ progress in our classes. While it tracks achievement, the purpose of My Coding Space isn’t to reinforce some false idea of linear progress; in our classes, each student embarks on an individual journey that has peaks and valleys and unfailingly unique rhythms. My Coding Space is designed to provide a full picture of where students are in those journeys so that we as teachers know where to guide them next and they, in turn, develop an appreciation for how far they’ve come.

Challenging, but Supported
My Coding Space is designed to challenge students to build their problem solving skills. The system contains a comprehensive library of Challenge Projects for students to choose from. We call these projects “Untutorials” because, while they help students break down complex projects into smaller steps, they don’t tell students exactly what to do.. Students must experiment, problem solve, and tinker as they devise their own solutions (and if they get stuck, our teachers are always there to provide guidance and help).

Independent, but Collaborative
When a student completes a step in an Untutorial, that step then becomes visible to our teachers, who can review the student’s work, approve the step, or send it back with feedback. The best part? Students don’t have to wait for feedback if they’re eager to keep working—they can simply move on while our teachers review! Once a student completes all steps of an Untutorial, they have the option to share their work to our community page so that other students can see what they’ve made.

Individualized, but Guided
Each student has a profile page in My Coding Space that displays their progress on each project, the scope of which might include Intro to Coding, Intro to Scratch, Scratch, WoofJS, and Web. As students complete projects, their profile provides helpful visuals of their progress through our curriculum, so we as teachers can best recommend next steps, communicate their achievements with parents, and allow them to pick up where they left off at the start of each semester with ease.

We’re thrilled to offer this added value to our classes and to continue expanding our program’s sophistication, breadth, and accessibility. Come back to our blog at the end of the summer to see what we’ve developed!

The Coding Space Cup: Where Legends Are Made

6/2/2021

Summer is almost here, which means we have our sleeves rolled up planning out another amazing camp season packed with activities and fun. It also means that something quite monumental is about to take place:

It's time for….

The Coding Space Cup!

Not sure what we’re talking about? Let’s do a thought experiment.

Imagine the greatest computer scientists in history: Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Barbara Liskov, John von Neumann. Then imagine a league of teams named after these computational maestros, each competing for glory in an elaborate system of points, power, puzzles, and prizes. Now imagine the teams are made up of our intrepid young campers faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve Coding Space Cup glory. To do so, they’ll need to write programs, solve problems, crack codes, win races, and overcome the toughest of mental challenges. If they do all of that, they might just have what it takes to honor their team name and cross the proverbial finish line with the final baton. Every Friday from June to August, the fate of our campers, computer science heroes, and humanity at large will rest on one question: Who has won The Coding Space Cup?

Now that we’ve let our imaginations run wild, we’ll come back down to earth and remember that The Coding Space Cup isn’t that serious. While not a tangible trophy, the title of Coding Space Cup winner is indeed real! Our campers (and counselors) had such a blast last year at our inaugural cup that we couldn’t wait to continue the tradition this year.

The rules are simple: Campers will be placed onto teams honoring the computer science greats. TCS Cup points will then be awarded to team members all week long in a plethora of categories. The team that accumulates the most points wins the cup! With so many chances to win points, campers will be inspired to apply themselves, test their limits, and collaborate for the betterment of their team.

Point earning opportunities include (but are not limited to): participating in warm-up activities like bringing their favorite book or showing a cool hidden talent; crushing physical activities like kickboxing or yoga; winning a scavenger hunt, juggling competition, or virtual relay race; posing as the most realistic movie scene or dominating a Shark Tank pitch; finishing a coding project that addresses a sustainable development goal or the weekly camp theme; and so much more! And that’s just the half of it. Campers will also have the chance to win discretionary points for being exceptionally awesome. Did they work through a frustrating moment and keep going? Did they help another camper? Were they extra focused, funny, or kind? Those are all point-worthy feats!

At the end of each week, we’ll celebrate the winners of The Coding Space Cup, and more importantly, the amazing achievements of every single one of our campers. Every year, we are blown away by how quickly and deeply our campers learn, how fun, funny, and kind they are, and oh how creative and smart. The purpose of The Coding Space Cup is not to choose a winner (although there will be one!) but to celebrate all of our campers’ accomplishments and inspire them to reach for the stars.

We can’t wait to see our campers in action this summer. Check out our camp options here. Three cheers for The Coding Space Cup and all our campers!

Announcing the Code 4 Change: Build a Better World Winners!

5/12/2021

This past weekend marked the end of our third Code 4 Change challenge: Build a Better World. This event asked our coders to use their skills and creativity to imagine unique tech-based solutions to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. After a month of hard work, participants submitted their projects for judging and friends and family explored the projects and voted for their favorites. Finally, coders joined us online for a special live finale event where we revealed the winners and celebrated everyone’s hard work.

Here are the winning projects in all nine categories:

Best Visual Design

India, age 12
"Code 4 Change Charity Quiz"

About the Project: “This is a quiz to determine which charity to donate to based on how you answer the questions.”

From the Judges: India's cleanly designed quiz helps you to find the best charities for helping with the causes you care about most. We were impressed by how clean the design of the project was overall, as well as her use of the UN Sustainable Goal icons. Making a project in Scratch that looks this good isn't easy, and India clearly didn't cut any corners!

Best Sound Design

Chase, age 9
“Climate Action - Save the Bears”

About the Project: “Climate Action as it affects bears and our planet.”

From the Judges: Chase's wholesome project about protecting wildlife from pollution is bursting with character. His voice recordings give the project a sense of urgency and humor which help to communicate his important message. The project also ends with a wonderful song composed entirely in Scratch - impressive!

Best Game Design

Ishmael, age 16
“Save The Trees!”

About the Project: “Climate change has created many problems on this planet and is responsible for natural disasters such as wildfires. In the ‘Save The Trees’ project, the goal is to save the trees by successfully putting out the raging flames with water. The player controls an aircraft that shoots water towards the flames below when the space bar is held. These flames produce a smoke that spawn at random between the different trees.”

From the Judges: Ishmael's project is about climate action - a game where you have to put out a forest fire! The game is unique and clever, demonstrating through its gameplay the perils of fighting forest fires. It's not easy - can you pilot the firefighting plane and douse the flames before the smoke ends your flight?

Most Educational

Alex, age 10; Veronica, age 11; Lily, age 9; and Claire, age 9
“C4C Peeps Group Project”

From the Judges: The C4C Peeps made a truly comprehensive group project - each of the students in the group made their own project about a different issue, and then they combined those projects into a central guide which helps you pick the project you'd like to try. This collaborative effort is truly packed with educational details on a variety of important issues.

Most Imaginative

Annabelle, age 12
“Stop-Deforestation”

About the Project: “This project ‘Stop-Deforestation’ is a game where you move the seed to plant the tree using the arrow keys into the patch of dirt and watch the tree grow. This game will also explain a few facts about deforestation and encourage you to plant your own tree.”

From the Judges: Annabelle's beautiful project imagines the player as the seed of a tree, showing the gradual process of growth. Her charming art really helps emphasize the important environmentalist message of her project, while creating a serene vibe which is truly unique.

Best Scratch

Manya, age 11
“Global Issues Game”

About the Project: “My project is focused on Good Health. There are many games that you can play since my project is a 4-in-one. ”

From the Judges: Manya's Global Issues Game is truly impressive - cramming a game about recycling, a puzzle about health, a quiz on environmental facts, and more all into one truly ambitious project! Clearly a lot of hard work and care went into building this fun and educational experience.

Best WoofJS/Web

Mira, age 11
“Food Banks and Where to Find Them”

About the Project: “I made a website with information about food banks, as well as a zip code based Google Maps iframe.”

From the Judges: Mira's project is a practical resource about how to support food banks in New York City - her site pairs important statistics about food insecurity with helpful information about how to best help. It also features an interactive map which allows you to search for food banks near where you live - so helpful!

Coders' Choice

Aniroodh, age 9
“Food Catcher”

About the Project: “‘Food Catcher’ is a game with a message. Your participation could help erase hunger. This game is about collecting food items before the time runs out.”

From the Judges: Aniroodh's project is an exciting game about collecting food to prevent hunger. You have a limited time to catch the variety of food items in your bowl - very fun, and the page shown at the end of the project when the game is done does a great job of reinforcing the positive message of the project.

In the spirit of Code 4 Change, each winner received a $50 donation to one of the following philanthropic organizations:

If you missed the finale, you can still check out the recording here and the full list of winners below. To explore all the projects submitted, click here.

Please join us in giving all our participants a big round of applause for their hard work and creativity! We’ll see you next time.

Don't Miss the Code 4 Change: Build a Better World Finale!

5/11/2021

Three cheers for our creative coders! Our C4C: Build a Better World participants have completed and submitted their programming projects, the votes have been cast, and the results have been tallied. Now, it's time to tune in for the finale event where we reveal the winners in these categories:

Best Visual Design
Best Sound Design
Best Game Design
Most Informative
Most Imaginative
Best Scratch
Best WoofJS
Best Web
Coders' Choice

Oh, and did we mention there will be prizes? Each category winner will receive a donation of $50 to support a philanthropic organization embodying the spirit of Code 4 Change. Winners are invited to choose from these organizations:

All projects will be featured on the TCS website and winning projects will be showcased in a special blog.

Watch the finale! The finale will be streamed live across several platforms on Sunday, May 16th starting at 3pm EST. You can watch by clicking on the links below:

We hope you’ll join us in acknowledging and celebrating the hard work of all our students and their creativity in devising solutions to problems facing kids just like them. Their generosity of spirit sets an excellent example for us all!

Celebrating Scratch During #ScratchWeek

5/3/2021

May 17-23 is Scratch Week, and we at The Coding Space can’t wait to celebrate! The weeklong virtual event promises tons of activities and surprises for the millions of avid Scratchers out there. In case you’re not familiar, Scratch is a block-based programming language designed for children and used by people of all ages in over 150 countries.

In Scratch, beginner programmers and coding experts alike can create stories, animations, and games and in doing so, use code as a means of creative expression, idea generation, and exploration.

Scratch was created in 2003 by the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group as a new way to teach kids how to code. As the project was adapted and shared with students, it became clear that Scratch’s impact was even bigger than that. In a November 2012 TED Talk, Mitch Resnick who led the development of Scratch puts it this way: “As kids are creating projects, they’re learning to code; even more importantly, they’re coding to learn.”

A wonderful example of this is one shared by Resnick. One of his students wanted to add a scoreboard to his game. Resnick showed him how by using the “Make a Variable” block to store and manipulate a number, and the grateful young coder thanked him over and over again in utter excitement to apply this new concept. The question Resnick drew from this scenario is this: How often are teachers thanked by their students for teaching them variables?

Rather than struggling in math class without knowing how or why a variable might be applied, this child was motivated to learn and understand because he saw a reason to learn it in the first place.

In Scratch, kids intuitively travel across disciplines as they learn to apply physics to make their character jump realistically or use the Cartesian coordinate system to move their character through a maze. Like Resnick’s student, young coders are inspired to learn new skills because they are motivated to apply those lessons to bring their creative ideas to life. Seeing the product of their knowledge in playable games or interactive storylines is a huge motivator for students, and for good reason: there’s nothing quite like seeing someone enjoy something we’ve made to keep us learning, growing, and creating. Can you tell we love Scratch? That’s why we use it every day in our coding classes and start every beginner student on it.

Just as not every person who learns to read and write will end up a professional writer, not every child who comes through our program will end up a software engineer. But what they’ll learn through coding will take them wherever they want to go. It will challenge them to break complex concepts down into smaller, solvable parts, to experiment, to collaborate through sharing work and editing other people’s code, to figure out why something isn’t working and how to fix it, to push through feelings of frustration and keep going until something new is born, to express who they are and what they care about. As each week of learning passes by at The Coding Space, we see again and again that when our students start learning to code in Scratch, learning to code is just the beginning.