Our Lady of Lourdes School: full STEAM ahead

Courtesy of Our Lady of Lourdes School

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SALT LAKE CITY — Well on course in its second year of implementing technology curriculum based on the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Our Lady of Lourdes School elementary and middle school students have had 12 solid weeks of learning how to think in computational terms by acquiring the basic skills of computer programming/coding.

According to ISTE Standard #6, students are expected to demonstrate a sound comprehension of technology concepts, systems and operations.

“If any instructor is having trouble keeping the attention of soon-to-graduate 8th grade students, teach them how to program!” exclaims Maestro De Astis, Information Communications Technology middle school teacher. “It’s simply astonishing how curious, interested and dedicated to figuring things out the students are when it comes to learning coding; they just keep on asking for more assignments.”

Tonni Trujillo is teaching programming basics to 1st through 4th grade students. In class they compare what they have learned about human brains, as programmed by God, that allow them to infer, deduce and make their own decisions with computers that don’t work without logical sets of commands. The students learn that programs are simply instructions – like instructions that teachers or their parents impart in them.

In preparation for high school, Lourdes bases its instruction through 6th grade on MIT Media Lab’s Scratch block programming designed to teach students how to solve tasks systematically and communicate creativity. They are learning to create games like cat and ball.

“They are thrilled when they accomplish a task as modest as a cat reacting to a ball; it makes them eager to learn something new each week,” points out Ms. Trujillo.

Students in the 6th through 8th grade start their navigation into coding by learning the principles of Boolean Logic, Truth Tables and the reasoning behind sorting algorithms. They complete their preparation by writing and testing assigned tasks in pseudo-code. This year 7th graders had to code the most efficient way to drive a school bus to pick up 100 students before school started, and 8th graders had to decide on the best route to deliver priority mail packages.

During the last weeks of the semester, 8th-graders test their skills by completing self-directed, online-based modules based on Python, one of the most extensively used coding languages for prototyping, robotics, science and math solutions.

“Our first project was to write code to create a password,” said 8th-grader Reece Vigil.  “I’m surprised that I like programming as much as I do.  It’s a lot of fun and I can see the value of learning how to do this.”

Our Lady of Lourdes School students graduate with a strong understanding of the foundations of computational thinking, how to write basic computer code, and with a preparedness to meet the next challenges they will face in a digitally based high school education.

Courtesy of Our Lady of Lourdes School