Christmas Hour of Coding at Fordham Prep

Fordham Prep’s Computer Science Department held its first-ever Christmas Hour of Coding in the McNamara Library’s Smart Classroom on December 13th, 2022.

Led by Computer Science department Chairperson Thomas Noone and Assistant Director of Technical Operations and Computer Science teacher Danielli Antoniou, a group of students enjoyed an hour of fun holiday-themed coding and iSTEAM problem-solving.

The hour began with Grinch Hour of Code. The object of the coding activity was to program the Grinch’s sleigh to jump high enough to go over reindeer that were standing in the way.

Students enjoying Grinch Hour of Code in the Smart Classroom during the Christmas Hour of Coding.

"This is like a video game," Noone laughed after hitting the reindeer twice. The students tried their best to give Noone a few tips on how to successfully jump over the reindeer before moving on to the next activity—Advent of Code.

Advent of Code is exactly what it sounds like—an Advent calendar of coding challenges. Each of the coding challenges focuses on a Christmas-themed story. 

The group started with Day 1, which was a challenge to build a program that would track the highest amount of calories consumed amongst a large group of elves.

After about 15 minutes of encouragement from Antoniou and a small snafu in Noone’s coding, the maximum calorie count was found.

The group then moved on to Day 2, which revolved around a rock paper scissors tournament. The challenge called the students to build a code that would allow them to calculate the outcomes of each round of thousands of rock paper scissors games among elves.

The activity brought holiday cheer for the group as Mehr ‘23 noted, he “found it exciting to work in a jolly group with silly and hilarious goals while also learning new code!" 

Combining an intense subject such as Computer Science with lighthearted fun made the hour worthwhile for Chimdi ‘23.

“Sitting in the room, surrounded by other students who were interested in the same thing that I was, was the most exciting part of my Hour of Coding experience,” said Chimdi ‘23, who is also one of a number of Prep seniors current enrolled in a Computer Science class at Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus. “I enjoyed learning new things amongst students of all experience levels, and also appreciated the jokes that we shared while we learned,” he continued.

While the coding challenges were humorous, Paul ‘24 appreciated the fact that they still taught meaningful skills.

“What I found most intriguing about the Christmas Hour of Coding we did was that all of the problems we completed could be applied in the real world,” he said. “Algorithms just like the ones we created are used every day in the Cyber Security world, as well as other industries,” he added.

To learn more about iSTEAM and iSTEAM related activities such as robotics and coding at Fordham Prep, visit www.fordhamprep.org/academics/isteam.