Day 3 of #warriorcode: Lessons Learned

We are now starting Day 3 of our #warriorcode event. During Day 1, we had a random assortment of students attend - most of whom did not register. Sadly, many of the select students who did register were "no-shows."

Thanks to MakerSquare, students have a specific program of challenges to follow, however. And, all who attended Day 1 returned for Day 2 and, hopefully, Day 3. So, even though the numbers are small, the retention rate is high. Therefore, the content and having a learning-based curriculum has been effective. Next year, we may run two programs - one for learning and one for challenges. We could do a learning program after school and a challenge-based one during lunches or before school. It has been very helpful to have MakerSquare and experienced programers on hand to guide the students and prompt the students to make the decisions we would not know.

So far, we would like to try the following next year:

• Better promote the idea of #warriorcode to students
• Don't shy away from the word "hack" as it has an appeal to students 
• Send through Remind 101 or other outlets students check
• Get groups like MakerSquare onboard early and advertise they are there
• Lay out a specific program 
• Set constraints on teacher-sourced problems so they can be solved in one week
• Add in a "wow-factor" to get students excited about it (goal is to get more kids interested in code and programming in addition to providing education and challenges to those already interested)

Stay tuned for more lessons learned as we wrap up our first event!