I was wondering if there's a command to manipulate the ascii value of specific characters in visual basic. It's a fairly simple process in other more complex languages.

The problem that I have is that I am making a curriculum for a summer camp teaching grade 6-8 students the basics of programming. The project I wanted to do was to write a simple encode/decode program in visual basic that the kids could create a windowed exe file they could execute at home but the best way I know how to encode a basic text message is to manipulate the ascii value. If there's any more project ideas out there or another way to encode that would be welcome as well as letting me know if there is a way to maniuplate character ascii values.