WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Code Wiz Westborough — the local coding and robotics school for kids ages 7 through 17 — has two new directors, Madison Ducote and Hannah Ryan.

Code Wiz, which opened in Westborough just before the onset of the pandemic, allows for children to work on collaborative and individual projects that are tailored to each student’s learning level and skills. Kids learn through interaction with different visual coding, game programming, 3D printing, and robotic courses. 

“You can see [the students] get so excited,” Ryan said. “It’s cool to see them like this because they get to build it themselves.”

The students complete projects rather than levels with the aim of fostering creativity and fueling an entrepreneurial spirit. The organization hopes their students’ work may later lead to world-changing technologies. The coaches are trained for the specific courses they teach.

“The amount that [the students] do, it baffles me,” said Ryan, who was a director at a gymnastics organization before joining Code Wiz. 

Ducote said that the “Code Combat” program is her favorite.

The Code Combat program.

“It’s set up like a 2D game,” said Ducote, who previously worked with Disney. “You have to code your little guy to move. You don’t use a mouse or anything. You’re moving just with coding.”

Ryan said her favorite coding game is “World Building with MineCraft.” She described it as less of a coding program, and more of a program to teach life skills.

The World Building with Minecraft program.

“It’s so wild,” Ducote said. “They’re using coding to modify the game… It’s all the kids together in the same world, and they work together to build a community with the same structures.”

The kids are able to “use their brains and be creative” throughout a lot of the different programs and offerings, Ryan said. The students learn problem solving, teamwork, organization and more. Ducote added that these skills are transferable then into other fields and areas within the kids’ lives.

“They’re going to find bugs,” Ryan said. “They’re going to find problems with their coding. Working through that problem solving is just going to build their analytical skills. It’s definitely going to teach them the skills that much more.”

Code Wiz offers week-long virtual camps and classes as well as smaller, in-person, mask-wearing camps. Full- and half-day offerings are available during the summer.

Ducote mentioned that their students are so passionate that they often ask for homework.

“They want more,” Ducote said. “We don’t often assign it, but if the parents or the kids want it, we’ll give them homework. They just want to keep going.”

For virtual classes, students and their Code Wiz coaches go into breakout rooms to brainstorm and learn. The children also work independently and learn by trying things out, with the guidance of the couches. 

“Seeing their eyes light up for when something works for the first time or when they’ve been doing all of this work and working through all of these problems or they’ve been working on a problem and then all of a sudden figure it out,” Ducote said, “that’s just the absolute best.”

The kids are able to still share their screens, so it is still an interactive experience.

“It’s so much fun to watch them. They’re all so creative,” Ducote said. “COVID-19 can’t stop learning. The kids wanted to do it, so we found a way.”

With the virtual option, the Westborough-branch of Code Wiz has been able to host students from across the country.

Ryan said Code Wiz is hoping to add more in person classes soon as well in addition to camps. She added that she would like to continue virtual learning even when it is no longer fully needed to allow for the continued outreach.

“So many kids want to code. So many kids can do it,” Ryan said. “They just got to get themselves going.”