WASHINGTON, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) – Students at Washington High School have been working hard to put on their annual light show.
This is the second year the high school has had an outdoor light show, and the students put it on.
Students in a computer science class spend the entire semester making this idea a reality.
“The kids right now, they are working on their light sequences. So they’re coding when a light turns on and off along with their song with respect to time and everything. So it’s hard work, it’s very meticulous but the kids learn a lot through sequencing and networks and programming through this activity,” Matt Riney, Computer Science Teacher, said.
Riney said this is a great way to get kids interested in computer science and show off their work to the entire community.
“What’s really neat is, since we get to showcase this to the community, it gets a lot of community support. So many people have come up to us and said ‘wow this is great, I hope my son or daughter or I hope my grandchild gets to take your class and learn more computer science,’ so it builds up the technical field and everything and it really paints computer science in a positive light for our community,” Riney said.
Not only does the light show get coded by the students, but it’s physically built by them as well.
Down the hall, students in a different class have been building the entire setup, making sure the lights are secured and building different shapes and objects.
“It was kind of fun, you know you literally just build a light show outside and show it to like everyone in town, like everyone in town can see it, turn on their radio and just listen to it and watch it,” Carl Schultz, a junior at Washington High School, said.
Once it’s finished, the light show will play every night through the month of December.
The light show will be on display outside of Washington High School. Community members will be able to drive up to watch it and tune in to a local radio station to hear the music that goes along with it.
“This year, there are going to be little, some minor differences from the design last year to this year. Last year we had a big snowman and this year, that snowman is going to be replaced with something else and the windows and the tree are all the same and everything but yeah it’s just a lot of fun,” Riney said.
Riney said they hope to be completely done and ready to press play sometime during the first week of December.
