Knox, Oak Ridge students break world record
Students from Knox County Schools and Oak Ridge City Schools officially hold the world record for the largest computer programming lesson.
Nearly 6,800 students from the two school districts joined together in November to break the record, though it was only recently certified by Guinness World Records, according to a news release Monday from Knox County Schools.
The previous record was about 1,000 students.
“Breaking the Guinness World Record shines a bright spotlight on Knoxville and Oak Ridge as global leaders and innovators in STEM education,” said Brandon Bruce, co-founder and chief operating officer of software tech company Cirrus Insight, in the release.
“The students, teachers and parent volunteers were determined to set the record. Everybody did an amazing job and students got to take home a certificate that says they’re world champions.”
The school district officially got the word Sunday that Code TN, a Great Schools Partnership initiative, had successfully broken the record.
Bruce and Caleb Fristoe, project manager of CodeTN, organized the effort with support from Knox County Schools and its Educational Technology and Information Technology departments.
Approximately 67 percent of new jobs in STEM are in computing, which is the largest and fastest growing source of new wages in the U.S., with 500,000 jobs currently available, the release said.
“Computer science will provide the blue-collar work of the future and by starting today we can equip our students with the necessary skills to compete for those jobs,” Fristoe said.
“We were inspired by the work of Code.org which organizes the annual Hour of Code, which we participate in every year, and decided to make a concerted effort to set a world record. There are now 6,778 local elementary, middle and high school students who are really excited about coding.”
During the world record attempt, students simultaneously watched an instructional YouTube video then followed the video lesson and learned how to code on classroom computers using Scratch, a web application developed by MIT.
Hundreds of classroom volunteers from local parent teacher associations, Volunteer Knoxville and local technology companies like Sword & Shield Enterprise Security served as stewards and witnesses for the world record attempt.
“It was awesome to see the community support for this effort,” Fristoe said. “The teachers, parents and volunteers were every bit as excited as the students to break the world record. The project really brought the community together to achieve a shared goal.”
“This was coding at its finest,” said Knox County Schools Director of Instructional Technology Theresa Nixon in the release. “Thousands of students had their first experience with coding. It was a showcase of collaboration and creativity.”