Teaching kids coding every Wednesday afternoon, junior Rohan Mehta uses Hack Club and computer workshops, to advance kids in coding.
This is a new club that started this school year because some students feel that they are limited on classes for computer science and wanted to make a change. The club is associated with the organization Hack Club that helps create coding clubs around the United States and internationally.
“[The] Souderton Area High School coding club work[s] with an organization called Hack Club, which is a California based nonprofit that helps create coding clubs across the United States, and also internationally,” Mehta said.
Mehta wrote the whole curriculum and also teaches the club and runs the meetings.
“Rohan said that he was going to basically come up with a curriculum by himself,” advisor Dennis Robertson said.
According to Robertson, Mehta gives group instructions first and then goes around and helps kids one-on-one with any questions they have.
“He teaches something upfront, on the SMART Board, and then he goes around and he talks to individuals and helps them through when they have questions,” Robertson said.
Club members like Mehta because he is very friendly, and they all think of him very highly and respond to him teaching the club positively.
“Rohan is a very friendly person, and everyone thinks very highly of him. He goes around and helps the kids. Everyone responds pretty positively to him, so it’s all around just a good environment with him there teaching everyone,” junior Anthony Palonis said.
The club consists of 15-20 kids from complete beginners to advanced coders. Each kid will work on a specific project for their skill set.
According to sophomore Carter Handcock, the club has a “coffee shop” atmosphere with music playing in the background and quiet talking.
The first thing members learned was how to make their own personal website. Now they are coding a video game and working on graphics.
“The first thing that we did was making a personal website. A lot of people right now are doing a lot of video game programming and graphic stuff.”
According to Robertson the Coding Club and the Engineering Club are thinking about merging to work on a self-driving car that uses Arduino code.