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Thuwal students meet Shaheen

Students and teachers from grades six through nine from the Thuwal schools visited KAUST on February 7 to take part in computer-oriented activities.

​Students and teachers from grades six through nine from the Thuwal schools visited KAUST on February 7 for a program of computer-oriented activities.

KAUST Social Responsibility coordinated the visit with assistance from students and staff volunteers from the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division (CEMSE). The first activity for the two groups of 20 female students and 21 male students was a practical computer coding lesson.

Inspired by the global education event "Hour of Code," the session introduced the students and their accompanying teachers to simple coding, with each using a Mac computer to work through an online tutorial that enabled them to write code to move a computer game character around the screen.

The small exercise in learning the basic building blocks of computer science was designed to show that anybody can learn the basics while utilizing skills for problem-solving, logic and imagination. With the teachers enjoying it as much as the students, it also demonstrated that computer science can be fun, creative and accessible to all ages.

Students and teachers from grades six through nine from the Thuwal schools visited KAUST on February 7 to take part in computer-oriented activities.

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After the coding workshops, the students watched two short films on the KAUST supercomputers Shaheen I and II and then toured the Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC).

The visit was made possible thanks to the enthusiastic support of 12 student and staff volunteers from CEMSE and Bilel Hadri of the ECRC for leading a tour of the supercomputing facilities in the KAUST Core Labs.


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