Elizabeth Ganga

eganga@lohud.com

Kids are obsessed with computer games, spending countless hours in front of screens.

Few know how those games work, and even fewer could create them themselves. But kids at Brookside Elementary in Ossining got a lesson recently in building the kinds of computer games they might play at home with characters from the Disney movie "Frozen" and the game Angry Birds.

What they may not have realized, before the lesson sunk in, was that they were actually using computer code to control the actions of the characters on the screen. The programs had been specially designed for young children — at Brookside it's first- and second-graders — to allow them to participate in Hour of Code Week, set aside to promote computer science and introduce the largest possible number of students to computer coding.

In the school library Wednesday morning, a circle of second-graders sat on the floor, all with their own Chromebooks. Caelan Gibbons and Vanessa Mocha, both 7, were working to get characters from "Frozen" to move around. They put together what looked like puzzle pieces on the screen that were actually pieces of code.

"You have to build the puzzles here; then you hit this," Vanessa said, pointing to a button on the screen. "And then it goes."

Though the children were thinking hard, problem solving and working together, they thought of it as mainly fun.

"We just think of it as a game. We don't think of it as we're learning anything," Caelan said.

But the teachers saw so much more in the work the children were doing.

"It teaches sequencing, it teaches problem solving, it teaches critical thinking," said Lindsay Valentine, Brookside's librarian.

Schools in the region participated in Hour of Code Week last year, but this year many more joined, holding Hour of Code events to introduce students to computer languages or integrating computer science into a week of activities. The nonprofit code.org promoted the week internationally, with the goals of getting millions of students to try out coding and pushing for more computer education in schools.

Part of the push is to get more girls and minorities into computer science. Despite the high demand for graduates with computer degrees, most high schools don't offer computer science, and less than 2.4 percent of college degrees are in computer science. Just 12 percent of computer-science degrees go to women, according to code.org.

Lily Saposnick, 14, a ninth-grader at Hastings High School, sees coding as a logical extension of the art classes she takes. At the same time, as the only girl in her school's Robotics Club, she is aware of the gender gap in the science and technology disciplines.

"I personally love it, but in terms of my school, I'm one of the few girls I know who attends that kind of stuff," Saposnick said after attending an Hour of Code event at the Mamaroneck Public Library on Thursday. The event, which brought out eight middle- and high school students, was organized by the STEM Alliance of Larchmont-Mamaroneck, a nonprofit trying to promote hands-on science, technology, engineering and math learning in the community.

A group of fifth-graders at Sloatsburg Elementary in the Ramapo Central School District got a coding lesson Friday morning in the computer lab. As the kids sat at the computers, they worked through progressively harder exercises. Ten-year-old Rowan was playing CodeMonkey, whose tagline is, "Write code. Catch bananas. Save the world." She had to navigate a monkey around obstacles by writing short snippets of code.

"Whoever created this, I like that they did this so kids understand the importance of computer science," Rowan said.

A map on hourofcode.com shows dozens of coding events in the Lower Hudson Valley.

At The Ursuline School in New Rochelle, a Catholic middle and high school for girls, the seniors in the Computer Science Club organized Hour of Code activities for the sixth-graders and promoted computer science through guest speakers and inspirational posters. The school has made a concerted effort to get more girls into computer science.

Caroline Squillante, 18, a senior and co-president of the club, said that when she was in 10th grade, only three girls were in her computer science class. Now it pulls in probably 30.

There's a misperception about what coding entails, she said: "They think it's all ones and zeros.

"We're telling people that it's not as scary as you think it is," said Squillante, who plans to go into computer engineering.

A recent speaker at the school told them the number of female computer science majors has dropped off dramatically since the 1980s, said Caroline Clancy, 17, also a senior.

"You really just don't see that many females in the industry," she said. But Clancy, who is taking a coding course at the Flatiron School in New York City, also wants to study computer science.

Their technology teacher, David Lorden, said coding and other facets of computer science will help them regardless of which field they go into.

"They're just better off for having done it," he said.

Twitter: @eganga