Rochester Institute of Technology Students Push Girls To Explore Coding
Female
students at the Rochester Institute
of Technology (RIT) are participating with local high schools
in the annual Hour
of Code event held around the world during Computer
Science Education
Week, December 7-13.
During
the week, teachers, parents and friends
are encouraged to give a one-hour tutorial on computer coding to
students. Tens
of millions of middle and high school students in more than 180
countries are
expected to participate in 200,000 coding events around the world and
60,000
events in the United States.
"The
Hour of Code is designed to demystify code,"
said Code.org Founder and CEO Hadi Partovi, "to show that computer science is
not rocket science and anybody can learn the basics."
In
Rochester, four members of RIT's Women in
Computing Group will join White House Chief Technology Officer Megan
Smith in a
panel discussion dealing with the gender gap in computer science. The
event,
held at Seneca Falls High School, is intended to encourage female
students to
pursue careers in computing.
The
event will include a screening and discussion
of "CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap," a documentary by Robin Reynolds on
why
women often opt out of computer science.
The
RIT Women in Computing Group members will
also help teach computer coding at the Hillside Work-Scholarship
Connection.
Before the panel discussion, they will tour Mynderse Academy in Seneca
Falls to
see demonstrations of the school's computer science and robotics
classes.
"Girls
and minorities are severely
underrepresented in programming, but fortunately, there's something we
can do
about it," said Lana Verschage, director of RIT's Women in Computing.
"Our goal
is to get kids to think, create and have a blast — all while learning
some
computer programming."
The
RIT students involved in the Hour of Code
events in Rochester are Shannon McIntosh (second-year software
engineering
major) and Asia Woodside, Morgan Keiser and Ariana Caraballo (all
second-year
computer science majors).
"I'm
looking forward to sharing my personal
experiences with being a female in computing," McIntosh said. "I think
it's
incredible how you can create a massive project from nothing. If you
have a
laptop and put some work in, you can develop just about anything."
Others
interested in participating in Hour of
Code can download tutorials with themes from "Star Wars," "Minecraft"
and "Frozen"
from code.org.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.