I just decorated the New Hampshire holiday tree outside the White House — and your kids (or you) can be next.
The 2014 National Christmas Tree will be lighted Dec. 4, in a ceremony outside the White House. The big tree is surrounded by smaller trees — state trees. This year, those trees will feature animated light patterns created on Google’s Made with Code website. Made with Code is Google’s initiative to encourage more girls to learn coding and to help them see coding and technology as a means to achieve their dreams, but anyone can code a pattern onto a tree by visiting the Made with Code site and clicking on “Code the Holidays.”
The patterns are created using Google’s Blockly code, which allows users to drag and drop blocks representing pieces of code (which, unseen in the background, generate actual code) without typing and see the effects of the code immediately on a model tree next to the coding screen. Users can change colors, sizes and patterns of the lights and adjust the movement and timing as well. The options are limited, but the result is unmistakably cool: My red and green stripes will spiral down the New Hampshire tree at 6:05 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 5.
Children who enjoy the process can move on to other projects within Made with Code, and then try out a similar visual coding language by creating games at Scratch, a coding platform for kids developed at MIT, play more games with Blockly or explore more (including games based on “Frozen,” Flappy Bird and Angry Birds) at learn.code.org.