STEM teacher shares “real-world” applications beyond the classroom
(Sebring, OH) December 8, 2023 – Brad Kirkland, Jr/Sr High School STEM and Technology teacher at Sebring Local Schools, set aside his ongoing curriculum in several of his classes this week to carve out time for the “Hour of Code,” an event dedicated to make coding more accessible to all skill levels.
The Educational Service Center of Eastern Ohio is leading the efforts locally, sharing access to a wide number of coding tutorials and activities, and providing coding certificates of completion to students participating in the week-long initiative.
Code.org, the organization behind the Hour of Code movement, and many coding websites have opened up their platforms to include free content for the week.
Students in Kirkland’s Robotics, Intro to Engineering, Carpentry 1 and 2, and Drones classes all participated, and gained hands-on experience in using coding websites, such as CodeMonkey, CodeCombat and Trinket, applying commands to generate responses through animation, games, simple drawings and more.
“We discussed the importance of coding, the different types of code and their various uses, including examples of using “if commands” to switch on and off real-world applications,” said Kirkland. “And then we practiced using these sites’ formats to implement different types of code logic.”
To address the initial intimidation of coding and spark interest and creativity among his students, Kirkland began the lesson with a personal story of how his father used coding to create the first wireless meat thermometer more than a decade ago.
“He used an ESP 8266 WiFi chip that you can purchase on Amazon for less than $10, cut the wire of the meat thermometer that originally ran to a speaker in the thermometer’s circuit board, which is designed to sound off when the meat reaches a certain temperature, and then he re-routed it to the new microchip and programmed it with an if-then command, which signaled to his phone when the meat reached that temperature,” recalls Kirkland. “Once you understand how to create rules and apply simple commands using microchip boards, the world is your oyster.”
Kirkland followed the footsteps of his father by experimenting with coding in everyday household activities, by programming a digital soil moisture sensor to water his plants on command.
“I wanted students to grasp the endless possibilities of implementing coding beyond the computer and how we typically think it’s applied,” explained Kirkland.
However, this isn’t the first time many of his students have been exposed to coding. Sebring offers two courses at the middle school level that introduce code, which include App Creators and Robotics, during which students learn how to program applications to function on tablets and use code to make robots move.
The ESCEO has also partnered with the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County to bring Hour of Code to the whole community. Visit https://www.libraryvisit.org/happenings/ for December events.
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