Start Blocks
Team Members
- Marcos Araque
- Sheng Chen
- Brian Hernandez
- Jonathan Wacker
Advisor: Wenjing Rao, PhD
Project Description
The demands of private and public industries for new computer science workers have overcome the ability of the American education system to produce them. According to a nationwide study, 60 percent of teachers say that they do not feel prepared to teach computer science. Additionally, 40-60 percent of students that enroll in a stem program in college either switch majors or drop out. As a result, we have built a product intended for students of ages 6-12 specifically to teach programming fundamentals. This product teaches students using a “block-based programming” approach in which code is grouped into “blocks” based on their functionality. These “blocks” are the input to control a video game we created. The game is a series of puzzles in which the user must use “code blocks” to maneuver a character to an endpoint while avoiding obstacles. The block-based programming approach is an effective tool to teach programming concepts to beginners, and the addition of physical blocks in our product can give a better visual understanding. This will help students learn computing concepts and general programming skills through an exciting, engaging manner and inspire them to pursue work in a related industry.