On December 1st, 2023, more than 100 Humble Independent School District middle school students met at the James D. Eggers Instructional Support Center to compete in Humble ISD’s Hackathon, an event where students competed in various technical challenges involving piloting robots, coding and graphic design.
The event was organized by Precus Glover, Humble ISD’s Professional Learning Coordinator and an avid superhero fan. Glover used that love of superheroes to add a fun twist to a typical hackathon by centering each event on a Marvel or DC Character.
The first challenge was based on Gotham City, the fictional city DC’s Batman calls home. The challenge involved the use of Spheros—small, ball-shaped robots that can be controlled with a smartphone or tablet. Students used iPads to guide the Spheros through a maze constructed with foam blocks to represent Arkham Asylum, a fictional psychiatric hospital featured in Batman stories.
The theme of the second challenge was DC’s Aquaman, and students continued to make use of the Spheros by ‘rescuing’ plastic balls that were floating in bins full of water. Students overcame the difficult challenge by collaborating with each other.
The most technologically-advanced challenge of the night was the ‘Spiderverse’ challenge, which had students using Root Robots—small educational robots designed to teach students programming logic—to play a game of Pac-Man on the whiteboards.
Students were split into two teams: ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’. The Villains drew dots on the whiteboard and heroes raced to erase the dots utilizing the dry-erase function of the Root Robots. While these heroes were erasing, the villains chased them across the board, trying to ‘tag’ them out.
Unlike the Spheros, which could be controlled through arrow key buttons on the iPads, the Root Robots had to have their movements programmed manually. This programming came in three different levels for those of varying levels of familiarity with coding. The highest level of difficulty implemented Python scripting to move the robots. To the surprise of the volunteers, many students adapted quickly to the highest level of difficulty, taking to coding like ducks to water. Several of them even had prior experience with Python.
“My mom signed me up for programming classes when I was l9,” one seventh grader from Autumn Ridge Middle School explained, “so I’ve seen all of this stuff before.”
The excitement about this event was not just among the students. Many of the district’s STEM teachers generously volunteered their time to help run the event and were very excited about the direction of technology education in the district.
Matthew Vibiral, IT for Humble ISD, was volunteering for the Gotham City Sphero event. He was excited for the future of technology usage in Humble ISD today.
“We have a real emphasis on coding right now in elementary schools, including Scratch and Code Monkey,” said Matthew Vibiral, Bear Branch Elementary’s Instructional Technologist and a Hackathon volunteer, “Kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders have been ‘coding’, putting blocks of actions together.”
This year’s edition of the Codecon Hackathon allowed both students and teachers to share a strong interest in technology. Teachers appreciate the ease and accessibility of education that technology usage in the classroom gives to them, and students reap the benefits of the exposure. Considering the technological problem-solving abilities of these students, it is clear that the students of Humble ISD are going to be ready to adapt to the rapidly-changing world.
Written by Kaylee Scanlin, Kingwood Park High School Class of 2021