Students learn to be junior web wizards
About 60 students attended the Island’s first Hackathon yesterday to learn about computer coding and building their own websites.
The children, between the ages of 11 and 17, were able to construct the pages during a six-hour session, and some are available on the internet.
The interactive lecture was led by Jahde Eve, who organised the event with a group of young professionals in an effort to encourage more youngsters into the world of computer programming and coding.
The students, each working from their own computers, were taken through an official course by Codecademy, an online education company.
After building a basic webpage they were able to add backgrounds, e-mail input fields and other features. They learned about font sizes as well as some design work, including creating an animation using the letters in their names.
Finally, they were able to add in some dynamic features, such as being able to add or remove parts of the page when the user pressed certain buttons.
One of the Hackathon organisers, James Tucker, said: “Some of the students have been able to take what they learned here and move that from the Codecademy site and into a real webpage, so they have now got a presence on the web, which is their own thing that they produced themselves.”
The budding programmers were able to get their partial websites online for free, using the free web-hosting system Neocities — one of many free hosting services.
Youngsters at the Hackathon praised the event. Here’s what some of them had to say about why they attended and what they learned:
Conor Sinclair, 12, Mount Saint Agnes Academy: “My brother suggested I try it out.
“I was a bit reluctant because I had already done some coding and worked on some apps before, but then I decided it was the best thing to do today.
“When I got here I realised it was different and I’m really enjoying it.
“I put together a web page and I made my name so when you hover the mouse over it the letters bubble up.
“I’m enjoying the experience of learning how to programme. I would like to do this in the future, I’d like to become website designer.”
Nathan Cabral, 13, Mount Saint Agnes Academy: “My brother, he’s big into this stuff. He builds games and so he told me I should come.
I’m really interested in that stuff so I decided to come.
“I enjoyed making my own website. I have a polling station on my website so people can vote if they like the same [football] team as I do, Chelsea.
“I want to be an architecture because I like computers and art. This could help me with that but I think [coding] is something I would like to do on the side — I’d like to make games. My favourite game is Minecraft, so I’d like to make big games like that and see if I can make a lot of money off them.”
Gisella Filice, 12, Bermuda High School: “My mom introduced it to me and I said I’d go because at school we have done this and it’s something I’d like to get into. I’ve enjoyed making the beginners’ website, that was quite fun.
“I haven’t found what I want to do [in the future] yet so I will play it by ear — it might involve coding, I’m not sure.
“We have a class at school in term one. We learn the same thing how to structure websites. Putting in the background on the web page was difficult — sometimes it erased the work and I had to do it all over again.”
Zane Aberdeen, 14, CedarBridge Academy: “I was interested in computers and stuff and just wanted to learn more about it.
“I started learning about it in high school. One of my classes has computer science and we learn how to build websites.
“I’m really enjoying making my own website and learning different things about it.
“I don’t find it complicated because I had learned a bit already, so it’s just learning more about that.”
