There has been minimal investigation into students programming their indigenous projects in relation to blocks of code and mainstream languages in computing education. This study examines high school students' experiences of programming non-western symbols using visual and text-based learning technologies. The high school students were exposed to a contextualised teaching strategy whereby cultural symbols were created using a web-based platform and an integrated development environment. In the end, 30 (N = 30) students responded to the questionnaires. The quantitative data revealed three key findings that were preferred to learning environments: 1) students' realisations of computers and perceived usefulness in cultural contexts; 2) students' motivations to succeed in computing education; 3) students' gradual assimilations of basic programming concepts. These findings seem to suggest that cultural referents stimulate students' interests to create indigenous projects in computing education that are also worthwhile outside the school walls.