In today’s Scratch coding class, we arrived at an important part of the programming process known as ‘debugging’. Debugging is the process of analyzing a piece of code, investigating why it doesn’t work correctly and finding a solution. Testing and debugging is a huge part of the computer programming process, and the most common activity of programmers. Depending on the size of the program, this process can take anywhere from several hours to several weeks. Today, I had the students do an activity called ‘Debug It!’, where they were presented with programs that didn’t work on purpose, and were challenged to 1) load and investigate the buggy program 2) tinker with problematic code and 3) test possible solutions and then ‘Remix’ and save the final program with the correct code. The purpose of this exercise was to develop a set of testing and debugging strategies that will be beneficial for future debugging projects.
DIVAS (Digital Interactive Visual Arts Sciences) for Social Justice aims to bridge the digital divide by combining media literacy and cultural awareness along with a vast understanding of technology to encourage young women in under served communities to pursue careers in computer science and new media.
