Programming for girls
Jeren Konak · 2016
Many women are not in Information Technology careers for multiple reasons. We wanted to create a workshop that targeted middle school girls who do not have many opportunities to learn computer programming. We decided that having female high school and college students with help teach this workshop would allow them to inspire and better connect with the middle school students. For our workshop, we used Scratch-programming language since it is very user friendly and it does not require prior knowledge of computer programing to use it. Many of the girls came into the workshop with less confidence with using technology and less interest in pursuing technology related careers than the boys. For our workshop, we taught the students different parts of Scratch by showing them the function of each part and asking them to create a mini project from what they learned. After we got through the important aspects of Scratch, we asked the students to create their own game. Despite the girls thinking that their experience in using technology was much less than the boys, by the end of the workshop the girls created games that the boys could not. Thereby, the girls realize that programming can be fun and just because they are girls doesn't mean that Information Technology jobs are not for them.