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Date: 6/8/2022
GRANBY – During their May 24 meeting the School Committee welcomed seventh and eighth grade media teacher Molly Hurd to talk about the new and exciting work she has been doing with her classes.
Superintendent Stephen Sullivan said Hurd was invited to showcase her work at Granby Junior-Senior High School helping students establish base knowledge and functions of coding. Hurd said when classes first started, many students felt as though they had no idea what they were getting into, but eventually with time and practice students were able to learn a course very unique to what has been offered in the past for coding courses in public schools.
“It’s interesting and cool, I’m really proud of the work being done,” Hurd said. “A lot of them think, ‘there’s no way I can do this,’ and they end up doing really great things.”
Hurd explained that for her Media 7 class for seventh graders, focus for students is on learning to design websites using HTML and CSS to code a site of their own. Hurd presented screen captures of what students see when coding a website and what the website itself looks like following completion.
Hurd added that students also get experience finding and citing images online for reference and the correct way to do so.
In the Media 8 course, students take the next step in coding and begin learning how to code games with basic python and apps with JavaScript. Hurd said students so far in this course have learned how to use the basic operations of these code building programs for the games.
There have been two stand out creations so far from Hurd’s Media 8 course: the Dog Quiz App, and the Bloop App. The Dog Quiz App allows anyone to take a quiz on a variety of subjects related to dogs including testing users in identifying the breed of dog in certain parts of the app.
The Bloop App, also named and created by students, was designed to help distressed students manage their everyday stresses and use tools within the app to improve their overall mental health. The app includes a mood check in where you rate how you are feeling and a text box to essentially journal thoughts on what makes the person happy and what could make the day better.
The app also includes wellness check ins and reminders for personal hygiene. Hurd said this project has been impressive and she is proud her students are using their newfound knowledge to address and try and help with mental health issues.
“They put a lot of thought and effort into how they can use what they’re making to make the world happier,” Hurd said.