CodeWizardsHQ student, Hollace is a busy, talented, and competitive eighth grader. She not only excels in coding but also in the worlds of music, art, and sports. Her dedication to excellence in so many disciplines has made us take notice and has earned Hollace a Student Spotlight.
Hollace’s Coding Journey
Hollace’s dad, a computer technician, recognized his daughter’s interest in tech and gaming early and started her coding journey by introducing her to Scratch. He told her that she could play any game that she could write. Hollace remembers those early coding days.
“Initially, I wanted to make games that I could play. I remember that the hardest thing I was ever able to make, was the little cat in Scratch. I was able to use arrow keys to make him jump and eat the food, and then you go to level two, and it would be harder, and there would be a trap.”
Hollace started virtual school during the pandemic. Her dad shared how her formal coding education started.
“We were looking for some opportunities where we could extend her education. She had expressed interest in coding, so I was looking for online coding classes and ran across CodeWizards in my search.”
The program’s structured curriculum appealed to him.
“There was a definite path for the curriculum. It looked like it would be a good model for somebody who was trying to learn. So that made us try CodeWizards as opposed to some of the others that we’re looking at. Having an online face-to-face component was also important.”
Hollace is currently in her eighth class at CodeWizardsHQ, the Wizard Level II Capstone Middle School course. She has enjoyed being in classes with many of the same students throughout her tenure at CodeWizards and finds it interesting that one of her peers lives in England.
Hollace shared several of her favorite CodeWizardsHQ projects. She liked the Wizard Quest game that she created with Python in the Middle School Capstone I class. Each Wizard Level consists of three classes and concludes with a Capstone Course where students cement their learning and deepen their understanding of each level’s learning with innovative and engaging projects.
Hollace also mentioned a Hogwarts-themed newsletter as a memorable project. This project is all about creativity and customization and is coded with HTML/CSS. Hollace enjoys working with the structure of HTML.
Hollace has been an active contributor on the CodeWizards Student Forum, an online community where students can ask coding questions of their peers, share projects, or just chat online. Hollace made an app on her own that shows what different hairstyles will look like on CodeWizards student avatars and shared it on the Forum. She relates that she likes helping others solve their coding problems.
“I like solving people’s problems if I can, and the Forum is also a good place to be able to get your problems fixed. Someone else can say, ‘Hey, this is what I think.’”
An Accomplished Athlete, Artist, and Musician
Hollace is both an accomplished coder and an artist. She supplements her online education with art classes and pairs her art and coding skills in website projects and other creations. She is interested in pursuing a career in web development or graphic design.
Hollace is a busy girl outside of the classroom. She participates in competitive gymnastics. She has been a gymnast since she was young, and she has competed for the past four years. Hollace travels for competitions and mentions that her best events are bars and floor exercises. Her best finish in a competition was on the bars, where she earned a very impressive score of 9.8. Hollace noted that coding and gymnastics have something in common- practice.
“The more you do something, the more you get better at it, and the more you do something, the easier it gets.”
Hollace is a skilled musician too. She’s been playing the piano since she was four and is a seven-year veteran of the fiddle. The mandolin is a more recent addition to her repertoire. Hollace is an exceptionally talented fiddler, an interest that evolved from a love of bluegrass music. She competes in the summer at fiddlers’ conventions and music festivals and has taken quite a few top places. In 2023, she earned first place in Youth Bluegrass Fiddle at the world’s largest fiddlers’ convention.
In her scant free time, Hollace’s hobbies include reading and independent art projects.
CodeWizardsHQ is proud to shine a light on Hollace, an exceptional student, both in and out of the coding classroom, and we are thrilled that she continues to be part of our coding family. It seems that her instructor, Aaron Nemes, a musician himself, agrees.
Hollace is an amazing student with great skills in art and especially in coding. Her hard work is most reflected in building web pages and designing them. She is always excited to share her work and her art and shares a love for music as I do.
Aaron Neme, CodeWizardsHQ Instructor
