Brookwood High School hosted an Hour of Code event for our cluster. The Hour of Code is a national event designed to encourage and create awareness around one of the fastest growing career fields: computing. Computing is at the cornerstone of most STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields and more and more career fields require students to know how to read and write code. It is becoming an essential skill as important as reading and arithmetic. Writing code also helps students to problem solve and think critically.

In the first hour, 82 elementary students and their families participated in hands-on activities in the Commons (they played magic tricks, used binary code to make bracelets with their initials, decoded a secret message in code, and practiced color decryption) and did computer games and simulations centered around code. In the second hour, 34 middle school students and their families and 15 high school students participated in more advanced computer activities. Students who attended had fun while learning about code and computer science.

Many thanks to Crystal Furman for all of her hard work and coordination of events and for the many volunteers (Brookwood students, cluster parents, and cluster Business and Tech teachers/ LSTCs) that helped make it happen! Brookwood is looking forward to hosting other STEM events in the future!