Did you know that only 4% of girls grow up to work with technology and computers? In elementary school girls start to lose interest and shy away from math and science. Today many schools push for everyone to learn more math and science and hopefully spark future creative geniuses to work in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) field. Thankfully, libraries offer amazing programs today (if we do so say ourselves) that help kids be exposed to new technology, learn programming, and start helping them explore their interests.
On October 3, Ms. Alison started a Girls Coding Club to encourage young girls to give coding and technology a try. We started the program talking about Ada Lovelace the world’s first female programmer! Ada was alive between 1815 and 1850. She theorized an equation for an engine to repeat a series of instructions, a process known as looping in computer programs we use today.
We played with Dash and Dot the Wonder Robots to test the waters and see how the girls enjoyed the program. The challenge was to code Dash around a maze from start to finish. The coding language is dragging and dropping coding blocks together to tell the robot how you want it to move.
During the program, the girls and Ms. Alison discussed future class topics such as Scratch and creating their own games, Code.org and solving puzzles, and taking pictures of Sphero the robotic ball while it zooms around the room in the dark. Regardless, we have lots of fun planned for the future! Hopefully as we keep meeting we can progress and dig a little deeper each time to expand our skills.
We will be meeting again in December and will get started with Scratch programming. Be sure to check the calendar in November for future dates!