High School Launches STEAM Career Coding Courses

Branson High School – Coding and Video Game Design Course – STEAM Career Course

 
This fall, April Fiesler started the first coding and game development class at Branson High School, a beautiful school nestled in the Ozark mountain country of southern Missouri. April has fast become one of our favorite teachers to work with.  

Coding and STEAM Educator – April Fiesler – Business and Marketing Education, Yearbook & DECA Advisor

 
When we first met April, she and the Branson administration were in the process of scaling up STEAM programs. At the time, Branson had no coding or app development courses available, and they wanted to offer their students new and engaging courses. They sought out available courseware, and after reviewing and testing various options decided to work with the team at CTeLearning. Branson chose to implement the Coding and 3D Video Game Design as well as the Web and Mobile App Development courses to help their students build skills for high demand STEM and STEAM careers .  

Our founder Steve was looking for an excuse to get out of the office, so he made a trip to visit April and her students to see what they were up to.

Students in BHS Coding and Video Game Development Course

Steve was completely blown away when he witnessed what the students had done in the Carbonade project. The students’ creativity, coding and sense of adventure was incredible. During his visit, Steve texted members of the CTeLearning team videos and pictures of the games he was seeing.

BHS Student game concept.

While at Branson, Steve talked to the students about building on their successes and submitting to the Future Game and App Designer Competition. Based on what we have witnessed in the videos, April’s students certainly have the game development chops to medal and get on the podium (a timely Olympics reference for you). We are planning to post some of these videos to our YouTube channel soon.

Steve always enjoys chatting with students to get feedback on the courseware: what they like, don’t like, and how the CTeLearning team can improve and enhance the learning experience for the students. At Branson, Steve spoke at length with the students and came away with great feedback. Everything at BHS painted the picture of students loving to be a part of Ms. Fiesler’s class and it is always the teacher that makes this kind of atmosphere happen.

Making Organization Fun

He was incredibly impressed with the students and says April has created a great learning environment. During his visit, students demonstrated an impressive willingness to take on challenges and work to create new things. They all showed appreciation for April’s motivation and effort to make a class like this happen at Branson. There isn’t another high school within 150 miles that has such a program.

 
Steve already has plans to sweet-talk April into doing an interview after her class completes the Web and Mobile App course. He would like to get her impressions of what it is like to be a first-year CTeLearning.com educator teaching both the Coding and Video Game Design and the Web and Mobile App courses consecutively.  

April’s students are not only getting a great STEM experience, but they are also getting an opportunity to earn STEM / STEAM Career Credentials. Imagine being able to graduate High School with and industry certification in Coding and Game Development  or Web and Mobile App Coding. These industry certifications are optional. The certification exams can be proctored right at BHS making it easy for students to get certified.

For now, we hope you enjoy hearing from a student who loved the course and appreciated the gift of coding that April and her administration provided the BHS students.