A group of 10 bright students at Sacred Heart/Sacré Coeur School are looking to get an early jump into a world of high-tech careers.
Starting a couple of weeks ago, the group, which features exclusively Grade 5 girls, has been focusing on computer programming through an online program known as Tynker. At the helm of the course, is Melanie Dzeryk, who is part of the school’s community council, which is funding the program.
Tynker focuses on building an educational foundation based in science, technology, engineering and math in order to raise students for a life of 21st century career opportunities. With the boom in smartphones, tablets and the ongoing forward momentum in computing power, it’s the computer programming and software engineering jobs that typically rank as the best or most desired ones in North America.
The comfortable salaries, opportunities for creativity and working conditions frequently put those jobs into the top ranked careers on an annual basis. In 2014, Canadian Business ranked software engineers at 26th out of the best 100 jobs. Careercast.com ranked them seventh, just ahead of a computer systems analyst.
While women may be underrepresented in software and technology fields, the determined group of students at Sacred Heart are interested in learning and doing some work.
“The girls are really excited. It’s cool to see just girls, because I expected boys to sign up,” noted Dzeryk, who said when she was in school studying programming, she was in a class of 50 with only five other women. “But it has changed a lot in 20 years, and they just get it.”
Everything the girls are learning can be applied to just about any other subject they’re learning in school. It doesn’t matter that they’re making a game, said Dzeryk.
“They’re learning math concepts with loops. They’re learning engineering by (solving) how are they going to place (an object) within a structure. They can eventually link this to hardware, so they can program some little robots,” she said.
Sacred Heart is one of about five schools that have funded programs that give students access to Tynker’s resources. The programming is compatible with students as young as Grade 3 and covers basic concepts as well as more advanced ones as the students advance with the different lessons.
“They are learning to program, right from the basics,” said Dzeryk. “It’s visual programming, learning the concepts of loops and visual codes, linking it to little characters and even little scenes.”
The program is specifically geared toward Grade 5 students and includes 17 lessons, though the Sacred Heart program will run only eight weeks. Students will be completing about one lesson each week.
“These girls, if they do all the lessons, will be able to create apps and little games they can share with their friends and family. It’s pretty cool,” added Dzeryk.
Once the program ends, however, the students will be able to take their base knowledge home, log in from their house and continue working through the courses as much as they want.
The course doesn’t require any special software or computers. Students are able to simply log into their Tynker pages and begin working their way through the material.
“They work through it at their own speed,” said Dzeryk, who supervises, answers questions and helps the students with any difficulties. “There are a lot of questions initially. Programming is new to all of these girls, so there are a lot of initial questions as to what the terminology means.”
At the moment, the program has been funded just for this eight-week course, but Dzeryk and principal Mary Ellen Barreth are exploring the possibility of making it available to more students for years to come.
