Written by Well…it’s certainly been awhile since I’ve posted, but I guess a 6-month sabbatical from blogging isn’t too bad. I literally feel like I’m just getting back to the idea of working after the summer break…it’s been 11 weeks?!
Anyways, my latest inspiration has had two sources – my amazing group of 14-15 year old women in my ICS2O course and my own daughter.
Lately, I have been giving a lot of thought to coding and young women. This I’m sure is due to the increased media attention and copious Hour of Code resources floating around the Twittersphere.
My class is already an engaged audience of #girlsintech. Smart, fierce, curious, willing to take risks, and hungry to learn more about programming, coding and app development. But the real surprising moments of learning for me, is how they have proven to be a bunch of feminists too. Last class involved a lively discussion of #gamergate and the barriers that women face entering into CS programs in university. As a lifelong feminist myself, I left that class with my heart warmed…the next generation to take up the torch! 🙂
But, what it really got me thinking about was…we push STEM and coding with our young women, but wouldn’t it be even more impactful if we are reaching these girls while they’re still in primary school. And here’s where my daughter comes in…Grade 1 at a local public school, absolutely NO technology in their classroom (oh…I forgot about the 1 desktop in the corner…that has a floppy drive in it!). She’s smart, fierce, curious, willing to take risks and hungry to learn more about everything. See the pattern here? Why can’t I do coding with her? So I did…Saturday afternoon we sat at the computer and played The Foos. She thought it was hilarious – they do silly dances when you program them correctly. Would you believe the biggest challenge was teaching her how to click the mouse (we resorted to just using the touch function on my tablet screen)?
So here’s where we’re going with it at work…rather than just do an Hour of Code with our ICS2O students…we’re helping them develop an Hour of Code where they will go and lead the Hour with our Grade 1 and 2 students in the junior school.
Still in the early stages, but we think it’ll be a blast for all of the students.
Check out a couple of primary coding resources we’ve looked at, if you’re interested in doing coding with primary-age students (there are tons out there though).
Hi Erin,
Great post! I agree that there needs to be vertical alignment in order to engage students at a young age. Glad to see you are able to implement that at Branksome!
Thanks for this post, Erin. One of my goals is to get a 1:1 ratio of girls to boys in my CS classes (one of my other goals is to get 1:1 ratio of all students to CS-enrolled students, but they go hand in hand). I’m interested to hear more about your #girlsintech initiatives as I start to formulate my own plans.
Hi Erin,
Great to see you continue your blogging, and the excellent work you’re doing with Girls and Coding! At BVG, we are getting our Grade 12 com-tech students and students from the programming club to run the Hour of Code with our Grade 3s and our 6, 7 and 8s. Like you, reaching down is vital to success as they come up! Students teaching students is also really important to me, because it is more their language than anyone else’s!
Good luck, and I look forward to hearing about more on your Hour of Code experience!
garth.