Secret Code

Over the past week, I have been teaching kids in my computer class about code. We talked a lot about passwords and secrets, since that's where most of them start: memorizing mom's username and password for her phone so they can borrow it to play Angry Birds. I was happy when a third grade girl made the suggestion, "It's like sign language." It proved to be a perfect segue into my next presentation piece, where we played Simon Says with me acting as Simon, using only hand signals to get them all to stand up, sit down, put their hands on their heads, and so on. Now the rest of the class picked up on the sign language idea. I told them that every time they clicked their mouse or pushed a button on their keyboard that they were sending a message to their computer. They were using a code.
Apparently, so was the sign language interpreter at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela. Deaf South African and board member of the World Federation of the Deaf Youth Section Braam Jordaan said the interpreter was simply making up his own signs. For the benefit of my third graders, that would make this a truly secret code. “ANC-linked interpreter on the stage with dep president of ANC is signing rubbish. He cannot sign. Please get him off,” tweeted Wilma Newhoudt-Druchen, the first deaf woman elected to South African Parliament. Well, maybe it was a secret, but it was a bad secret.
Who knows? Maybe the guy who stood behind all those dignitaries was sending a message to someone, somewhere. For now, all we have is the reply from those who didn't understand what he was doing up there in the first place. Or maybe it was an interpretative interpretation.