My (Student) Experience at Code Madison Forward
Maydm is grateful for the incredible success of Code Madison Forward. Below is a message written by a student who participated in the event.
“Hi! My name is Ruthanne, and this is my first post on Maydm’s blog. I’m going to be writing about my experience as a student participating in Maydm’s event Code Madison Forward that took place during Forward Fest.
I was super excited when I was invited to participate in Code Madison Forward. The even was held in a room in the Capitol building. When I walked in, I was surprised to see how diverse the contestants were. Most of the contestants seemed to be teenagers, but some were in middle school, and some in high school (like me!). There were kids of many different skin colors and sizes. After introductions were over, one of the team leaders gave a brief presentation on HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
I knew a little about coding, and our team leader, Andrew, was a huge help. We had two hours to complete our webpage, and while that may seem like a long time, it really wasn’t! We were scrambling near the end to finish everything. By that time, I was exhausted! Coding came easily to me, but it was hard work and I had to really use my brain. Luckily, there was pizza for me to refuel on.
Presenting our webpage was. . . interesting. I was the one who presented it for my group, and for some reason, I couldn’t stop laughing. My group made a webpage for e-cream, or ice cream you can order through email. It was a completely fictional, made-up product, and it hadn’t seemed so silly when we thought of it! Maybe it was because our webpage was so silly that we got third place. Personally, I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t expected to win at all, but I was okay with that. I was just grateful for the learning experience. Somehow, though, we actually place third. That meant that we got a gift bag holding several prizes, including a Best-Buy Gift Card and a portable phone charger. We also got to go to PerBlue, a video-game company, and learn about how they make mobile video games.
It was an amazing feeling to actually place third and win a prize.
It felt even more amazing to learn about how websites are made. I don’t think enough people really think about what goes into websites like Facebook, YouTube or even this website that you are currently on! Participating in Code Madison Forward taught me that making websites is a long, arduous process that involves tons of variables. You have to type out hundreds of lines of code just to build a webpage, and even more code to make it look nice and add video, sound, or movement. There’s even code to make a website easier to access from different devices. It just blows my mind!
If you ever get the chance, you should definitely participate in an event like Code Madison Forward. Even better, you should take a class with Maydm and learn even more about coding! Seriously! Sign up now. You won’t regret it.”
