In Nod To Youth, Mapp Recognizes Computer Science Week With Proclamation

Governor Kenneth Mapp has honored Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 5-11, 2016) with an official territorial proclamation, the Virgin Islands Next Generation Network  (viNGN) announced Monday. This year 159,233 Hour of Code events are to be held worldwide, and several public, private and parochial schools have registered Hour of Code activities in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

On Thursday, December, 8, nearly 20 students from elementary to high school ages worked gleefully to complete their exercises during viNGN’s 4th annual Hour of Code event hosted by the Central Seventh-Day Adventist Church Public Computer Center (PCC) on St. Croix.

“The children are so engaged and happy,” PCC Site Manager Curtis Flemming said as 18 children enthusiastically worked to earn their completion certificates. “It is a great event – I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get started with coding and computer programming. Some of the students even earned two certificates.”

No coding or programming experience is required to share or take part in the Hour of Code. Participants chose from a variety of different exercises, some using blocks of code based on movies such as “Moana” and “Frozen” or popular games like “Minecraft” and “Angry Birds.” For more of a challenge, some students chose advanced games like “Code Combat” or Khan Academy’s, “Drawing with Code,” and typed real lines of code using languages such as Python and JavaScript.

Assisting the students were viNGN Network Technician Kevin “K2” Maynard; retired IT specialist Stanley Sneed; and Central SDA PCC volunteers (Kiene-Ann Philip, Auckland Flemming, Vernelle McSween and Antwon “C.J.” Phillip).

Code.org has merged with Computing in the Core to create the Code.org Advocacy Coalition to advocate for the institution of computer science training in all schools. The PCC Training Event (PCCTE) was held in honor of Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), in observance of the birth date of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper a computer scientist who played a part in the programming of the first all-electronic digital computer, the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), which was used by NASA in its moon missions.

Rear Admiral Hopper was born on December 9, 1906, and taught Computer Science and died at the age of 85 years old on January 1, 1992. Rear Admiral Hopper thought one of her greatest achievements in life was to teach others. She lectured in uniform at many universities, of which one of these universities was the National Defense University located in Washington DC, where the viNGN CEO and President, Dr. H. Mark McGibbon lectured for over a decade as a Visiting Private Industry Professor.