ESSO Spotlight: JCP

Do you ever feel the urge to integrate computer science into the lives of youth? Does your ideal Wednesday afternoon involve spending an hour teaching the children of Exeter how to make cool programs and games? Do you like turtles? Are you an Exonian? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then ESSO Junior Computer Programming (JCP) is just the thing for you!  At JCP we introduce elementary and middle schoolers to programming by starting them off with Pencil Code, a friendly drag-and-drop based coding environment used to control virtual turtles!

Kids make all sorts of applications, ranging from simple art projects to games like Agario. Not convinced? Just listen to some of our happy instructors! Prep Yunseo Choi, talked about her experience with JCP. “I really enjoy the club, especially how the kids get to continue working on their projects throughout the year. The co-heads and the other students are really nice, but I also learn a lot from the kids,” she said. “They can be extremely creative, and it’s fun to try to explain things in a way they can understand.”

Upper Andrew Loevinger, also commented on his experiences. “There is nothing more satisfying than watching a kid—who first said they don’t know how to program—create their first game,” he said. “You really feel like you are making a difference in their life.” Now some of you may think that you are not ‘experienced enough’ to teach kids how to code. But one thing that we really want to emphasize is that very little programming experience is needed to join the club. As long as you are willing to work with the kids, there is plenty of room for you to help out!

We meet every Wednesday afternoon from 4:30 to 5:30 PM in room 123 of the science building. If you are curious about the club or just want to play around with Pencil Code, come to our meetings next term or email Dawson Byrd ‘20 (dbyrd@exeter.edu) and Jaime Romero ‘19 (jromero@exeter.edu) for more information.