During the beginning of Summer courses at Haskell Indian Nations University, various activities and workshops, such as the weaving classes, are taught. One of these new sessions this summer was the coding camp, which took place in Blue Eagle Hall in the evenings on three separate Thursdays. Brian Wika, a School of Business professor at Haskell, and Jose Leyba, a senior at the University of Kansas, introduced this camp.
I attended the website course that was towards the end of the month, which showed attendees how to make a website using “HTML” which is a coding language that is very popular and is used a lot to build websites. The class was very informative and had an atmosphere that was welcoming to all ages and experience levels. Using worksheets and instructions, the students built a website with customizable content and the students were encouraged to experiment with the code that made up the website. I shortly spoke with him about what got him into the computer field, as his family was more in the medical field.
Wika commented, “The systematic approach to the processes of computers and how they function interested me, and I want to share that with others.”
Leyba was very active in the lesson helping students with questions they may have as well as adding to the lesson as a whole. At the end of class, I spoke with Mr. Wika and asked about what brought up the idea of offering these sessions.
Wika explained, “ I want to help give the spark to students that may be interested in tech and I want to help them take that first step into something they may want to continue professionally or for fun.”
Wika and Leyba were excited to be there and bring the information to those who attended. They did an amazing job explaining the concepts in a way that was more digestible to the audience and helped with any issues we had. Brian hopes to make the course a summer session that is free to attend for anyone who wants to visit in the future.
