Girl power
PUSD holds coding camp at STEAM lab
For 15 young ladies from Bartlett, Pioneer and Sequoia middle schools, summer vacation is off to a very industrious start.
Instead of spending their first week out of school relaxing or recreating, the girls spent three full days building up their technology skills and tearing down pre-conceived notions about the role of women in science and engineering fields at PUSD’S Girl Code camp.
The camp is the first of its kind at the district’s new STEAM lab at the former Citrus South Tule site, which opened last fall. It encourages young girls to consider pursuing careers in technology through coding activities, presentations from successful women in the industry, and exercises in self-exploration.
“The idea is for them to just explore opportunities and fields they’ve probably never heard of before like engineering and computer science,” said Crystal Browning, one of the teachers at the camp.
Campers worked on projects with paper circuits and microbits — a small battery powered device with 25 small red lights that students can program using block code or javascript to spell out words, display designs and even react to being bumped or respond to music.
They also heard from two women who work for Bitwise and Qualcomm via live stream presentation, who shared with campers their personal experiences in the technology field as well as some concerning statistics not even the camp teachers knew.
“I didn’t know that in the 90s, 40 percent of degrees in computer science were earned by women, but in 2018 that number is down to only 11 percent,” said Browning. “They’re really trying to empower girls to take a risk and see themselves in these fields.”
But the camp is about much more than writing code and programming. Campers also wrote in journals to chronicle their experiences and created artwork to stimulate their creative and expressive sides.
“The engineering process and the creative process are very similar in how ideas are developed and executed, trial and error, and changing and adapting as you go,” said Browning
The camp was modeled after a similar one hosted for young women in San Diego by Qualcomm, PUSD’S partner in the creation of the steam lab.
“Typically they are coding arduinos to make motorized devices at their camp, so we took the same concept and tweaked the end product,” said Reyes.
The final project for campers at the Girl Code camp was a self-portrait depicting what they’ve developed and experienced at the camp as well as who they are as individuals. Many students incorporated the microbits they programmed during the camp into their portraits to display a personalized message about themselves.
Camp educator Rebecca Reyes, whose background is in art education, hopes her campers leave the camp realizing they are just as capable of thriving in science and engineering fields as their male counterparts.
“There is indeed a barrier for women in these fields, so we wanted to break that down. This week we identified that barrier as being themselves,” said Reyes. “They’ve accepted someone saying they couldn’t, they shouldn’t, or they can’t. We’ve challenged them to identify labels that aren’t working for them and re-label themselves. Label yourself as an engineer, a mom, or whatever you want.”
For camper Yennifer Moreno, who attends Pioneer Middle School, the camp was well worth giving up three days of summer vacation.
“It’s been great. Much better than I expected it to be. I’ve learned you can do more than what you expected of yourself,” she said.
Moreno used javascript to program her microbit to display an animation of a heart in about two hours — a promising sign of aptitude for a young lady thinking about becoming a medical engineer.
“I’d definitely recommend the camp. It’s been a good experience,” she added.