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<p>KINGSTON &#8212; Three students who have never dabbled with computer programming instantly nixed one of the options for learning the basics through a visual tutorial. &#8220;We&#8217;re not doing Elsa!&#8221; Marline Corgelas stressed when offered the choice of working on a graphic of the Frozen princess, Minecraft or Star Wars Characters.</p><p>OK, that&#8217;s how the annual &#8220;Hour of Code&#8221; starts. Students get a simple sampling of how coding requires stacking sequential orders to get a computer to do what you want. What does this lead to? Just move two tables over in the Kirby library of Wyoming Seminary Upper School, where students worked different levels of the skill Wednesday afternoon.</p><p>&#8220;In our freshman year we made a website called No Work Homework,&#8221; Senior Mitch Kelly said. &#8220;It would do your geometry homework for you.&#8221;</p><p>Well, that sounds about as far off as Elsa&#8217;s mythic kingdom of Arendelle.</p><p>&#8220;We had 1,000 people on the site in the first week,&#8221; Kelly insisted. &#8220;From all seven continents.&#8221;</p><p>It&#8217;s getting as believable as a Disney cartoon.</p><p>He flips through site pages on his laptop, eagerly calling up a map of the world which shows, um, a blank map. &#8220;Nothing&#8217;s connected anymore,&#8221; Kelly explained of his lack of proof. &#8220;We shut the site down after a year.&#8221;</p><p>Fear not. Fellow coder Samarth Desai called up another map that <em>does</em> show where people were when they logged onto the No Work site, red dots that occupy all of three continents.</p><p>&#8220;Well it seemed like all seven,&#8221; Kelly laughed.</p><p>Kelly switched to a problem-solving page where you could, say, punch in the dimension of a geometric shape and get the area, no personal math involved. How would this make money?</p><p>&#8220;We charged for membership,&#8221; Desai explained.</p><p>&#8220;Nobody joined.&#8221; Kelly noted. Which is why the idea lost money. They were paying for the web domain space, but not getting anything in return.</p><p>The solution would be obvious to any teenage digital native: Sell merchandise through Zazzle, a website that makes your design a reality and takes a cut of each purchase. But they hit another snag.</p><p>Fellow coding senior Marshall Bursis nodded toward Kelly and pointed out &#8220;no one who wasn&#8217;t him bought any of it.&#8221;</p><p>Technically, Kelly confessed, he didn&#8217;t buy the stuff either. &#8220;I told my mom I needed to buy everybody Christmas gifts and bought a bunch of sweatshirts,&#8221; he said, laughing. &#8220;Then I used the money to pay off the website and we shut it down.&#8221;</p><p>Undaunted, the duo are launching a new site they were eager to show off. It connects Wyoming Seminary students who want to sell used books to those who want to buy. Log on and put your book on the list, then wait for someone else to log on and &#8220;buy&#8221; it. The seller gets an automatic email and the two arrange a meeting to make the transaction.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really cool,&#8221; several nearby classmates cooed simultaneously.</p><p>All of this spawned three years ago when these same students showed up the first time the school decided to participate in the Hour of Code, an international effort to get students interested in computer coding.</p><p>Most students agreed that even if they don&#8217;t get into computer coding, what they learn can be useful in pretty much any field these days. And yes, they plan to go to college, though without naming names &#8212; like, say, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates &#8212; Desai said with a wry grin that if college didn&#8217;t cut it, &#8220;we could always drop out; that seemed to work for some people.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Julius Guizetti, Charlie Chen and Claude Lv practice computer coding during Wyoming Seminary&#8217;s participation in the international &#8220;Hour of Code&#8221; in the Stettler Learning Resource Center in Kingston Wednesday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL121015code1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Julius Guizetti, Charlie Chen and Claude Lv practice computer coding during Wyoming Seminary&#8217;s participation in the international &#8220;Hour of Code&#8221; in the Stettler Learning Resource Center in Kingston Wednesday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger |Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL121015code2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Hannah Graf, Marline Corgelas, Claire Quinn, Pearl Miller and Cassie Kizis work under the guidance of Rachel Bartron, the director of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) at Wyoming Seminary during the Hour of Coding challenge Wednesday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/web1_TTL121015code2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Hannah Graf, Marline Corgelas, Claire Quinn, Pearl Miller and Cassie Kizis work under the guidance of Rachel Bartron, the director of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) at Wyoming Seminary during the Hour of Coding challenge Wednesday. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger |Times Leader </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Catching the code bug at Wyoming Seminary