Quincy students show off skills for Newhouse

QUINCY — Juan Zetina, a senior at Quincy High School, called it a roadblock. But to be honest it was more like his project ran into a ditch.

Juan was explaining his project to Dan Newhouse, representative for the Fourth District in the U.S. Congress, during Newhouse’s visit to school. Quincy is part of the TEALS program, in which computer science professionals work with high school students, and part of the program requirement is a culminating project.

Juan had to write a computer program, and he chose to work with Bitcoin, an alternative way to pay for goods and services. Juan and class partner Angel Bermudez figured out how to link Bitcoin with a smaller computing system called Raspberry Pie. So far so good.

But instructor Ross Kondo thought they could go further. He suggested they link Bitcoin with a network of Raspberry Pies. And that was where they ran into trouble.

“We needed extra hardware,” Angel said, and QHS didn’t have it. They were stuck, and the project deadline was looming.

But Juan didn’t panic. Well, “we can say there was a little panic in there,” he said.

Juan and Angel aren’t alone. “It’s one of those problems we run into writing real code,” said Matt McKee, a program manager with Microsoft in Redmond. McKee is a volunteer at QHS, working with the students every week via video conference.

Every kid in the TEALS class built a computer program for their culminating class project. Octavio Bustos chose to make a video game, which he demonstrated for Newhouse.

Octavio built a maze, with five levels for the player to master. “It was kind of easy,” he said, not requiring as much code as some other projects.

Angel also chose a video game, a variation on that classic test of spelling and word recognition called Hangman. He also demonstrated his game for Newhouse.

“They get credit for doing this, right? Playing computer games,” Newhouse joked.

“Only if they can write them first,” McKee said.

The TEALS program partners computer science professionals with students in 56 high schools around the state, McKee said. It’s the kind of training that will help students if they’re looking at a career in computer science, he added. He got help from professionals volunteering at his school, but it was after school and extracurricular. “I didn’t have an opportunity to learn this in class.”

Juan, faced with a deadline and no project, turned to the computer. “We just went on the net and looked up projects,” Angel said. They found a “user-friendly calculator,” which Juan used in his demonstration.

The calculator program can add, subtract, divide and multiply; it asks questions of the user, helping them through the process.

Coding, Juan explained, is the foundation of any computer program. “You’re pretty much telling the computer what to do,” he said in answer to question from Newhouse.

The TEALS program is designed to encourage kids to consider careers in computer science, and at QHS it’s piqued interest.

Juan has applied to the computer science program at Eastern Washington University, and Octavio has applied to Western Washington. As computers become a bigger and bigger part of industry, knowing the basics of computer science will be useful no matter what career students pursue, McKee said.