How can we use programs to create some interesting games and apps to share with our peers? When you think of the answer to this question, you may think of complex calculation formulas and codes first. But in fact, programming can be an easy and interesting thing. Everyone can use the magic of programming language to realize their own creativity or ideas. The Bit Day activity of SHSID held between Oct. 18 and 22 was a programming carnival. No matter what programming language you master, even a simple graphical programming language, you can also experience the charm of programming here.

There are no children who don't like games, only that "games" that are not interesting enough. On Bit Day, we held many interesting activities to integrate the familiar game methods with programming so that students could feel the fun of programming in the game.

The treasure-hunting answer game hid 30 different QR codes in the whole of ZTB and XMT for people to find. Each QR code corresponds to a question about computer science. These QR codes were links to the STEMDoge applet. The students were divided into various groups and they were excited to find nuggets of treasure everywhere.

And creative programming activities encourage students to open their minds, to play freely, and to realize their ideas. After making up interesting games, many students were excited to share them with the others around them, invited more people to experience their own game, and constantly improved that game, so that more people participated in the development of the game.

A tuning studio and music arrangement game combined art and programming, while some electromagnetic games integrated physics knowledge into programming. This interdisciplinary programming activity also allowed students to understand their knowledge from a new perspective.

In both the morning and the afternoon of October 22nd, high school students intensely participated in the first round of Coding a Tournament, hosted by some junior students. With different programming languages, students from different grades made the best use of computational thinking to write and debug their codes in the 3-hour time period. Finally, 10 out of more than 20 contestants ranked among the top and advanced to the second round of the tournament. Through either writing codes in the competition or studying the solution codes afterward, all students learned a lot from this experience and became more fascinated by the art of competitive programming.

In addition to teaching and entertainment, the Bit Day activity aimed to break the “stereotype” and helped students of different ages, genders, and abilities open the door to the computer science world.

(Written/Pictures by the STEMDoge Family   Supervised by Fei Zhao, Da Li    Reviewed by Qian Zuo)