Texas teachers learn coding at UTD, hoping to bring lessons to their classrooms

Via Dallas Morning News – The sound of water splashing, followed by a chorus of laughter, echoed around a large room at the University of Texas at Dallas. School was out for students, but not for the 11 teachers in the class.

Science, math and computer science teachers from across Texas smiled at their blue and purple laptops. With a click, they tried to make an animated frog jump from one moving yellow circle to the next. Every time a frog missed, there was the sound of a splash.

“Are any frogs injured in the making of this game?” asked Bill Dunklau, who teaches computer science at Lakehill Preparatory School in Dallas.

The classroom erupted in laughter once again.

During a one-week coding camp earlier this month, the teachers created various projects through Alice, a 3D programming environment created at MIT. The virtual platform has built-in animated objects that users can control through drop-down menu options, making it possible to program and create games like the leapfrog one.

Continue reading Kaitlynn Martin’s article.

Photo Credit – Dallas Morning News

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The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 1,600 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,100 master’s students, 160 PhD students, and 80 faculty members, as of Fall 2015. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.