Trumpet blares, fading sounds of heartbeats and a ringing alarm clock.
These aren’t sound effects for a movie — rather, for music projects created by fifth graders in Evanston/Skokie School District 65. The effects represent Jamaican culture, deforestation and early wake-ups for school, respectively.
Students used TunePad, an online platform developed by Northwestern’s Tangible Interaction Design and Learning Laboratory, which uses Python code to create music.
The TIDAL Lab aims to design “innovative technology-based learning experiences,” according to its website.
TIDAL Director and computer science Prof. Michael Horn said TunePad was initially designed for high school and college students, and has been simplified for younger age levels due to the collaboration with District 65.
Now, NU students can volunteer to teach the software first-hand to the fifth-graders.
“You can exist as a student on campus and almost never interact with the local community,” Horn said. “It’s important to have these kinds of opportunities to get out of the bubble.”
Coding the beat
Eighth-year computer science and learning sciences Ph.D. candidate Nicholas LaGrassa, who oversees the initiative, said it began five years ago when District 65 was looking for collaborators to develop effective computer science content. After a successful pilot program, NU and District 65 arranged a “research-practice partnership,” they said.
LaGrassa said that in Winter Quarter, 33 volunteers from NU taught the software to elementary school students across 28 computer science classes.
TunePad is a “great introduction” for fifth graders developmentally transitioning from block to script coding, Melissa Smoler, District 65’s head of computer science, said. According to District 65’s website, fifth graders learn block-based coding languages like Blockly and Scratch that require dragging and dropping blocks of code to create programs.
The collaborative curriculum begins with a series of activities where students use block-based coding to understand musical foundations such as rhythms and beats. Students then transition to script-based Python coding with themed tutorials, like practicing note timings by recreating “Hedwig’s Theme” from Harry Potter and chord progressions for a Bad Bunny remix.
In the second annual BitCrush event on April 11, the students shared their ‘music + code’ projects through a showcase and live coding competition.
LaGrassa said the program is a conceptual shift from a technical learning focus to fostering musical self-expression and creativity.
“The technical learning is all done in service of learning to express oneself about something that’s important to them,” LaGrassa said.
Weinberg senior Belen Edgar, who helps LaGrassa oversee the volunteer program, said the volunteer application includes a series of scenario-based questions to assess applicants’ teaching mindset. Volunteers also have to be trained on teaching methods, using TunePad and classroom logistics before they begin their lessons.
Then, for one 40-minute time block each week, two volunteers collaborate with a District 65 teacher to deliver the TunePad curriculum in the classroom, Edgar said.
“You only see them once a week for 40 minutes, so it’s really meaningful when you realize your presence actually matters to them,” Edgar said.
Cultivating creativity
Weinberg first-year Hassan Almutkassi, who taught two classes per week in Winter Quarter, said joining the program made him feel closer to home because he also has a brother in fifth grade.
Rina Dema, a Weinberg senior who started volunteering in her sophomore year, said she joined the program because she wanted to encourage more students to pursue computer science by cultivating an accessible space for them.
“I grew up on the South Side in a pretty underfunded neighborhood, so being able to give kids that opportunity meant a lot to me,” Dema said.
While managing the different things happening at once in the classroom was challenging, there were many rewarding moments, Dema said, including a time when a usually disengaged student approached her after class for additional help on a programming portion.
That student’s project turned out to be an “Among Us”-themed song. Other projects included Taylor Swift’s “eras” reflected through fifth graders’ musical styles and on the theme of gun violence, Dema said.
Humanizing computer science education means cultivating self-identity and preventing narratives about who or who is not welcomed into the learning spaces, LaGrassa said. The field is more than a “loner man with a hoodie in a dark room hacking.”
“These are narratives that keep women away,” LaGrassa said. “They’re narratives that keep nonbinary people away, people of color, absolutely.”
University of Chicago first-year Ph.D. student in computer science Mercy Omwoyo (McCormick ’25) said her research experience in TunePad helped her get involved at UChicago’s CANON Lab.
After two years volunteering in the TunePad program, Omwoyo said she became a researcher and investigated identity development in TunePad through class observations and one-on-one interviews at NU. She said her interest came from Horn’s Transformative CS Education class.
“It made me reimagine what computer science education could be instead of the passive, not-motivated type of STEM learning we usually see,” Omwoyo said.
Many volunteers, including Dema, said TunePad gets students excited and more engaged in computer science, whether it’s through sharing their culture, working together or creating projects on social issues.
“People love to dismiss kids and be like ‘Oh they don’t understand,’ but (the social issues) are something that a lot of kids live with and are exposed to in their daily lives,” Dema said. “So I think it’s really cool that they’re using this class as an opportunity to share a part of their identity and their values with us.”
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