If you walked into Boothbay Region High School or Boothbay Region Elementary School during the past week, you might have seen kids playing Angry Birds on an iPad, or Plants and Zombies on an iMac.

But these kids weren't goofing off. They were participating in a worldwide initiative called “Hour of Code” where students and adults from all across the globe learn basic coding, also known as computer programming. As of Dec. 15, 74,887,681 people have participated, according to www.code.org.

Instead of coding with text, the students use what are called visual blocks. These contain instructions such as “move forward” or “turn left” to instruct the figure on screen where to move. Each puzzle has a character that needs to create a figure, follow a maze, or perform a set of tasks.

For the Frozen puzzle, students helped Elsa or Anna create figures on the ice while skating. For Angry Birds, students guided the red bird to the green pig. There are many different games to choose from.

As interesting as this is, why is it important that all student learn about computer programming?

“These kids have the world at their fingertips,” said Judy Dorr, technology coordinator at BRES. “They are predicting that by the year 2020, there will only be enough people skilled in computer programming to fill one-third of the jobs available.”

On Dec. 12, Dorr worked with the seventh grade class on its Hour of Code. Dorr mentioned how the seventh graders are the graduating class of 2020, the year the shortage is predicted to occur.

The seventh graders had three levels of puzzles to get though. They started with an Angry Birds maze, moved onto Plants and Zombies, and ended with Ice Age, where they helped Scrat the saber-tooth squirrel finally get his acorn.

When the students learned they would be coding with these popular characters, they got much more excited about the project.

“I've never done any coding before, and it's a shame, because I've been really interested in this stuff for a while,” seventh grader Damien Colby said. “I definitely plan to continue learning about this because I want to end up programming games someday.”

“I've never been interested in this, but it's kind of fun to work in it,” seventh grader Kelsey Poore said while she figured out how which way her zombie needed to turn.

Winona Barter finished her three levels of puzzles before class ended, so she moved on to the Frozen game.

“The puzzles were pretty easy,” she said. “I've never done programming before, but my sister has.”

Barter, along with several other students, said she would like to continue learning about programming, and was looking forward to robotics class next year and at the high school level in a couple years.

Over at BRHS, the students all participated in a school-wide Hour of Code on Dec. 11. They held an assembly that morning, where the students were given a live example of coding where the Seahawk mascot, played by Camden Spear, followed a set of instructions to move through a maze of blocks.

Senior Sinead Miller, who has never taken any coding classes, volunteered from the audience to create the code, with instructions held up by Emily Higgins' programming students: Colin Cabrera, Eben Goodwin, Taylor Jackson, Jeremiah Lucas, David Machon, Jared Morgan, Lisa Pawlowski, Quinton Perkins, Riley Spear and Collin Thompson. They were short a couple people, so Evan Hepburn (who took the class two years ago) and Julian Aponte (who hasn't taken it — yet) also helped out.

Later that day all the high school students gathered in their homerooms and chose different games from the Hour of Code website to practice.

Higgins started off by telling her freshman homeroom how her dad worked for IBM for 40 years, and knew computers would be a big thing. She learned how to program in BASIC and Python when she was younger, and talked about how the field has expanded so there are dozens of options now. She's currently finishing up a class at the University of Southern Maine on Java programming.

Higgins said the students had a choice of what programming game to use, but suggested Angry Birds for beginners.

“This is kinda cool, and easier than I thought,” freshman Sierra Murray said while working to make the White House Christmas tree lights change color on her iPad screen. “I never thought about this as a career path, but it's interesting.”

Upstairs in Mark Gorey's homeroom, freshman Rebecca Taylor said it was “fun but challenging” as she created a Flappy Bird program.

Sophomores Angie Perkins and Victoria Rackliff both worked on programming Flappy Bird.

“I'm a unicorn — with lasers!” Perkins said. “I score a point whenever I crash into something.”

Freshman Lillian Sherburne had never worked on programming before.

“When it works it's like wow ... I actually did it,” she said.

All the BRES students who complete the three levels of code will be receiving a completion certificate. The students in grades 5 and up have this week to finish, while students in grades 4 and under have until Christmas.

BRHS Technology Integrator Barbara Greenstone created the website students and staff used to learn about the hour of code (https://sites.google.com/a/csd3-brhs.org/hour-of-code/home), and worked with Higgins on the organization.

The Hour of Code is free and open to everyone of any age to try. It can be accessed at www.code.org.