Whidbey Makers was a flurry of typing and swiping Wednesday.

Dozens of children turned out for Computer Science Education Week events on South Whidbey. Organized by Whidbey Makers and the Atlantis ROV team, several lessons were planned to introduce and encourage people to try out computer science through coding. Atlantis mentor Ashley McConnaughey said about 40 children took part in the first Hour of Code in Clinton, with several more at the handful of other events throughout the day.

Held at the vast lab spaces of Whidbey Makers in Clinton, the first Hour of Code event was a mixed bag of good and bad. The good: a couple dozen students between the ages of four and 18, plus adults into their 70s, showed up to take part in the international Hour of Code. The bad: code.org crashed because an estimated 60 million people logged on for the annual event, a four-fold jump from last year, and some devices were unable to connect to Whidbey Makers’ wireless router because of water damage.

Of the two dozen children, it was about an equal split between boys and girls. Statistics repeatedly show that mostly boys and men take to electronics. According to a report by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, women represented 24 percent of workforce in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, called STEM, in 2011.

Atlantis’ reputation and cache brought a handful of tech professionals from Alaska Airlines and Microsoft’s Surface team to help at the Whidbey event.

“The cool thing about coding is you can start dreaming things up, code it, and make it reality,” said Allison Korczynski, a hardware engineer at Microsoft who worked on the Surface tablet. 

Attending the event was part of the Surface team’s desire to reach out and inspire children and especially girls to pursue STEM fields and professions. She and her colleagues met the Atlantis girls during the Sally Ride Science Festival at the University of Washington, Bothell in October. Atlantis asked if they’d be willing to attend their coding day, and three Microsoft professionals came.

“This is really motivating to me,” Korczynski said, adding that when she was the age of the children at the first event, there were no events like this.

“The level of STEM outreach isn’t always there,” she added. “We want to expose STEM a little bit.”

Skill levels varied widely among the participants. Marcia Monma, a computer programmer for 30 years, was there tinkering with the tutorials for fun and to help anyone if they needed. One 11-year-old Clinton girl, Sierra Wilmoth, wanted to try computer code because her sister does it and encouraged her to try. She envisioned coding could be useful someday.

“I might want to design my own website if I have my own business,” she said.

A pair of 13-year-old boys sat near the back of the room on laptops. Already experienced in a few coding languages, they weren’t there for a tutorial but to participate in elbow-to-elbow programming. Eros Harper and Aidan Doña [needs accent above n] tinkered with a video game they’ve been “hacking,” the term for using an available or open source code and altering it in such a way as to make it their own.

“So that they’re the enemies I want,” Aidan said.

They were changing “Cave Story.” Eros worked on the two-dimensional textures, objects and characters within the game, by creating new ones in pixel art.

“There’s not many playable features,” Eros said.

The most popular things there, however, were not the laptops and tablets. It was the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset brought by the Microsoft trio. At any chance, students lined up to take a turn putting it on. While they waited, they were given a demonstration of a 3D printer, partially made from 3D-printed parts, creating ornaments for a Christmas tree.

Atlantis ROV ‘s parent mentor Ashley McConnaughey said the team is looking at hosting a future Hour of Code event.