To kick off the school year, a new club, Kids Who Code, is starting at NHS. At the helm of this new club, Pete Freeman, a graduate NHS student, and Zack Baker,  senior at NHS and creator of Pass Whiz, are working with teachers at NHS to get the club into action.

The club will consist of elementary school students in the dirtict and students at NHS collaborating to learn and understand coding concepts and technology. The club’s biggest goal is to create connections between all the students and spark interest in technology for future references.

The club will also be working with a robot that is a ball-like object the size of a tennis ball. The official name of it is a sphero. It is controlled through a control pad on a smart phone contributing to the technology aspect of the club. It’s also durable enough to stand on, gives at least an hour of nonstop play, waterproof and you can connect games specific to the sphero on your phone. So that will fall into the technology aspect of the club.

“The first year we plan on visiting each elementary school once, but eventually I would love to see this across multiple districts and try to talk to as many students as possible”, Baker said.

Eventually the club is going to try to expand to Indiana Public Schools to help them develop these simple skills for a job one day. Jobs that ask for coding skills and knowledge of computer programming include customer service, web designer, security expert, graphic designer, technical support and much more.

“The club looks for students with good peer and teacher recommendations. Also an excellent history here in Noblesville”, Baker said.

“Anyone can learn to code and the club accepts students at all levels.” Christy Steffen said.

Christy Steffen, head teacher of the club and also an instrutional coach at NHS, says that it’s an important skill for everyone to learn and that spreading the love of coding and having fun while doing it will be the biggest benefits.   The club will be beneficial for building relationships, interacting with different ages and learning something new. Not to mention that it looks good on college applications.

The club will meet approximately once a week during AL. More information on the starting dates will be announced closer to the first club meeting in October.