South Bend Schools Leverage Dark Fiber to Boost Coding Classes
One morning at Riley High shows what students can build with the right technology.
It’s 8:30 Monday morning and we’re at Riley High School on South Bend’s southeast side. It’s cold and raining. You’d expect to find classrooms full of students begrudgingly opening textbooks to start a new week — and you’d be wrong.
A handful of students has arrived early to the second floor computer lab and as soon as the door is unlocked, they’re off to log in. We watch as screens light up with the gamut of coding tools— Trello for project management, Android Studio for app development, and Scratch for visual coding.
This is a public school in 2018.
“It’s like learning a new language.” 💡
Kristen Haubold’s second-year computer science class is focused on java-based app development in industry-standard software Android Studio.
“My goal is, at the end of that class, for any student to be able to take what they’ve learned, take a programming language they want to learn or some project they want to do, and just run with it.”
Andrew Walkowski is working with a group to build a slang dictionary app using Android Studio. The app allows users to either input slang definitions or search for unknown words and phrases. On top of the development software, Andrew is using Backendless, an online data storage platform, for the dictionary files.
His favorite part? Seeing it all come together:
“…so you can plug in something, and it changes, and you see it happening on that screen knowing you did that.”
The biggest challenge? Finding the errors. Andrew explains that he’ll have “pages and pages of code” with one tiny error hiding in the midst. He says that though the mental side of thinking through issues is difficult, the reward of seeing it work makes it worth the effort.
More data. More speed. More possibilities. ⚡️
In 2016, Riley was one of 11 South Bend Schools connecting to the Metronet Zing network to enable new tools and methods for teaching computer science. Riley’s computer science classes are only a sample of the innovative education in South Bend schools
That’s leveraging the speed and capacity of our dark fiber network.
These are skills typically gained during college computer science courses, and immediately valuable to employers. We are proud to play a role in equipping South Bend’s students with the skills required to compete in today’s global economy.
See what these Riley students are building with our glimpse into class:
Thanks for reading! We are an open-access fiber optic network serving South Bend, IN and surrounding communities. Learn more: metronetzing.org
