Early this morning, approximately 70 Cornell Tech graduate students visited Roosevelt Island to teach coding classes to about 60 PS/IS 217 middle school students. According to a Cornell Tech spokesperson:

Cornell Tech grad students will head to Roosevelt Island’s PS/IS 217 to teach coding classes to middle schoolers for its second “Hack Roosevelt Island” day. The student volunteers will work with 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students on spooky, Halloween-themed coding projects using the coding language, Scratch.

Led by 70 accomplished engineering, health tech, connective media, and MBA students from all over the world, Hack Roosevelt Island Let’s Code RI will help show that coding can be easy and fun for kids. Through the games, kids will learn useful computational thinking methods that they can use in a variety of classes and situations.

Cornell Tech Student Marissa Lowman describes the Roosevelt Island Halloween Hackathon and Roosevelt Island middle school student Olivia Schaefer shows us the game she built with the help of a Cornell Tech student Jason Hershman. Olivia said that she really liked her game and its fun to play. Displaying a true entrepreneurial spirit, Olivia added that she would like to sell her games:

… to everyone across the world….

PS/IS 217 Principal Mandana Beckman learned to code Scratch too. Ms Beckman reported:

Our middle school students had an amazing time designing their Halloween themed games. Thank you Diane Levitt, Cornell Tech mentors and the staff from the Museum of Moving Image for planning this event for our student.

More from the Roosevelt Island PS/IS 217 Cornell Tech Halloween Hackathon from the Twitterverse. Here’s the first Cornell Tech Roosevelt Island PS/IS 217 and Seniors Association Hackathon from last April.

Roosevelt Islander