[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]June 2018:
June 7th marked the last day of our program before summer break. We are so proud to see how far our XX Coders have come along. In the past year, they have learned several programming languages and designed their own personal websites. With some of the students leaving for college in the fall, we hope that their coding classes will be a breeze.
In celebration of completing the program, we invited Renee Flager, President of Girls Inc. to meet with the girls, and she came prepared with thought-provoking activities for us. Renee, a fierce advocator of female empowerment, had us do exercises to boost our confidence and proudly display our accomplishments thus far. We then shifted to awareness of how media can affect our self-esteem and choices. Overall, we learned how to be more mindful of the influences around us and how much power we have over our decisions. We really enjoyed having this period of reflection with Renee!
We look forward to seeing the girls for our 2nd annual summer coding camp, where we will have more guest speakers, a field trip to Microsoft, and coding activities!
[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_column_text]May 2018
We had an amazing time with our guest, Diane Chao, TEDxTeen speaker and founder of a “Letters to Strangers”. In the midst of final exams and company meetings, Diane made the trek from Princeton, NJ to spend time with our students and connect with them on a personal level. Although she has faced many hardships growing up, she turned her life around by adapting a growth-mindset from an early age. Now she is an advocate of mental health and talks about the importance of pursuing what we are passionate about.
L2S is a mental health organization that provides a channel through which people can share their stories, or tidbits of their lives to others. So far, it has impacted 27,000 people worldwide. But that is not all. Diane has also been featured in Vogue Italia for her photography, recognized by the US Navy for her research of the dengue virus, and featured in the American Astronomical Society by NASA. It was an honor to hear her story, which we were all inspired by. Even with all that she’s accomplished so far, she remains very humble, empathetic, and easy to relate with.
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April 2018:
We were honored to have Jeanine Reynolds, Director of Development at the Wyandanch Youth Center, give a talk to the girls during one of our after-school session during Black History Month. Mrs. Reynolds spoke about the beginning of her journey from North Carolina Central University, and the importance of having a core group of women who empower each other during her college career. Currently, she is dedicated to providing equal opportunity to all individuals, regardless of their background or socioeconomic status.
Another guest joined us during Earth Day to speak about the environmental justice and risks in Wyandanch. She is the founder of a non-profit environmental agency, Starflower, that works towards educating people about the environment. It was a very engaging discussion, starting from local pollutants, to the government’s response, and a future forecast if we don’t take action of improving the climate.
Both of these awesome women dedicated their work to their respective causes. To see the result of their hard work and how far they’ve come is very inspiring.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][vc_column_text]
3/9/18
This past month has been quite eventful for our after-school program. For Valentine’s Day, we held party for the girls, which had a great turnout. Also, in celebration of Black History Month, we had a special guest, Alexa Cox, join us. Alexa is currently Miss Long Island Teen 2018! She immediately connected with the girls upon arrival. Together, they worked on designing their own t-shirts with the theme being female empowerment. It was a great bonding experience overall with Alexa being a role model for the girls.
We are also excited to be celebrating Women’s History Month by doing various activities for the month of March week. We will open the floor to discussions about minorities in tech, and how we can work towards decreasing the gender gap. Next week in particular, we will be having women in tech and minority women in the industry as guest speakers! Family members are welcome to join us.
As of now, during the weekly meetings, students are continuing to build their own website. They start off by learning HTML/CSS/JavaScript through online tutorials and then utilizing this knowledge to enhance their sites. This is good practice for navigating through the multitude of resources available to them. Some girls carry strengths in design (UI/UX), while others are more comfortable with programming/scripting.
Going forward, we will be switching gears and offering a more hands-on approach. Starting from this month, we will be teaching students how to create their own story with python.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]February 1st, 2018
At the end of last month, we participated in a code-a-thon hosted by We Connect the Dots. We have been looking forward to this event for a few months now, and the day finally came! Overall, the experience was great. It was a 3-day overnight event, and the girls got a chance to meet new people from different schools who they worked with in a group setting. The challenge was to create a solution for a humanitarian or social problem and present the idea on a website they developed. Our team was part of two different groups: one that created a car filter for harmful chemicals such as carbon and sulfur to prevent pollution, and another that engineered a graphene house-mold that would protect people from natural disasters.
Ultimately, girls had a chance to meet mentors, attend workshops, learn how to divide work amongst themselves, and build something together! This was a great bonding experience for all of us.
As for the weekly meetings, the girls have continued working on their personalized websites using HTML and CSS. We are planning on adding more activities and new lessons for them in the future meetings.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]January 18th, 2018
Happy New Year! I hope everyone is doing well, I wish you all the best for this upcoming year.
Our holiday party was filled with fun activities and food ! A big thanks to those who were able to join us. The girls ended the year strong: we bonded, ate food, played games, and did coding activities.
Now that we are back from the break full speed, we will once again be focusing on their websites that the girls have been working on. This gives them a chance to get their creative juices while having fun in the process. They are learning Python and JavaScript in CodeAcademy, which they are applying to their websites on WordPress. For future classes, we plan to have more comprehensive lessons on web development languages.
As a reminder, the 48-hour code-a-thon hosted by We Connect The Dots is coming up next month (January 26-28th). This is a 2-day marathon where students, even those who have no experience with coding, can come together to work on coding projects. This is also a great opportunity to meet people of different districts and backgrounds. For more information, you can visit: http://we-connect-the-dots.org/results-of-2017-codeathon. As of now, online registration is closed, so if you haven’t registered yet, let us know and we can add you to our list.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]December 9th, 2017
Our Thanksgiving Feast was a blast! I’d like to thank all of the attendees who were able to join us, it was great having you there. We will also be hosting a Christmas Party on Dec. 21st. The girls are welcome to bring their family members. I know that this is a busy time of the year, but we really hope you can make it! It will be a good way to wrap up the year and get to share our experiences and meet and get to know you all.
As a reminder, the 48-hour code-a-thon hosted by We Connect The Dots is coming up next month (January 26-28th). This is a 2-day marathon where students, even those who have no experience with coding, can come together to work on coding projects. This is also a great opportunity to meet people of different districts and backgrounds. For more information, you can visit: http://we-connect-the-dots.org/results-of-2017-codeathon. As of now, online registration is closed, so if you haven’t registered yet, let us know and we can add you to our list.
So far, the girls have continued working on their personal websites with WordPress. This week, they learned to use Python and JavaScript on Codecademy to later on apply it to their websites.
As the end of the year approaches, it is a good time to reflect on how far the students have come. In as little since fall, they have already started learning several programming languages, such as JavaScript, Python, HTML, and CSS, and have been using that knowledge to build their own website. This is not a small feat, as learning to code is a challenging process. I’m excited to see how far they will go!
[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]November 16, 2017
Time flies—we’re already halfway through November! This week, we introduced the girls to making personal websites using WordPress, a very commonly used system used to make websites. They explored the dashboard controls and how to create a new blog post and change the main image for the website. Because next week is Thanksgiving, we won’t be meeting on November 23rd. However, all of the girls are welcome to bring their families to our November 30th meeting for a Thanksgiving feast! We hope you can join us. Additionally, we’d like to ask that you please encourage other girls in your community to join our class in order to learn about the wonders of technology and join our mission to close the gap in the tech industry.
Exciting news is that XX Coders will be part of We Connect The Dots 48-hour code-a-thon January 26th to the 28th in 2018! This is a two-day sleepover code-a-thon where students, even with no experience in coding, are able to work in groups to create their own coding project– whether it be an app, website, or game! This is a great opportunity for the XX Coders to meet boys and girls from different districts and different backgrounds all while bonding with them over the course of a weekend. It also will allow them to meet amazing people who have pursued the career of technology and computer science.
Participants are encouraged to sign up now through this link, by selecting the “Westbury, NY” location. Also, please make sure that when you write your school name you also include “XX Coders” so that the organization will know we are coming together as a group: http://we-connect-the-dots.org/register-for-codeathon-2018
Once again, the program is open to all girls in the greater Wyandanch area. XX Coders runs from 5 to 6:30 PM every Thursday at the Wyandanch Family Life Center at 20 Andrews Ave, Wyandanch NY 11798. We hope to see you there!
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October 31st, 2017
We hope you had a spooktacular October! This week has been very eventful as the XX Coders fall session has begun at the Wyandanch Family Life Center. At our first XX Coders meeting, the girls dressed up in fabulous costumes and had a lot of fun coding and eating candy. The girls have begun coding in Codecademy, learning the languages of Java, Python, and HTML and CSS. This fall, we will be focusing on coding with a purpose: fixing a social issue in our communities and lives.
Exciting news is that XX Coders will be part of We Connect The Dots 48-hour code-a-thon January 26th to the 28th in 2018! This is a two-day sleepover code-a-thon where students, even with no experience in coding, are able to work in groups to create their own coding project– whether it be an app, website, or game! This is a great opportunity for the XX Coders to meet boys and girls from different districts and different backgrounds all while bonding with them over the course of a weekend. It also will allow them to meet amazing people who have pursued the career of technology and computer science.
Participants are encouraged to sign up now through this link, by selecting the “Westbury, NY” location. Also, please make sure that when you write your school name you also include “XX Coders” so that the organization will know we are coming together as a group: http://we-connect-the-dots.org/register-for-codeathon-2018
Once again, the program is open to all girls in the greater Wyandanch area. XX Coders runs from 5 to 6:30 PM every Thursday at the Wyandanch Family Life Center on 20 Andrews Ave, Wyandanch NY 11798. We hope to see you there![/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”pink” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
September 4, 2017
Happy September! I sincerely hope you have all enjoyed your summer! I am so excited to start teaching coding again! As the new school year approaches, we have received many inquiries about the fall session of XX Coders. I’m pleased to announce that the program will start again in October. It will be held at the Family Life Center in Wyandanch. We will notify parents and children via email shortly with exact dates and times as well as details regarding transportation (bus pick-up). The program will be provided free of charge. Please spread the word about the program! We would love to have as many bright and eager students as possible join us in October! We have a lot of exciting talks, trips and events planned, including a trip to Google and a hackathon event!
In the meantime, if any of your girls wanted to continue practicing code, I wanted to leave you with some useful links you can pass on so that they can keep practicing using the same resources used during the summer session:
- www.scratch.mit.edu [Scratch]
- www.codecombat.com [JavaScript/Python]
- www.techrocket.com [Java]
Students can use the same login information they used during the camp and pick up from where they last left off.
If your child is brand new to XX Coders and coding, please do not be alarmed! The XX Coders curriculum is custom-tailored to your child’s experience level.
For those parents and children who participated in the summer session, we would appreciate it if you took just ten minutes of your time to complete a survey about the XX Coders camp. Please follow this link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XX3X3DM. Your survey answers will remain confidential and will be used for the evaluation of grant purposes only. This will help XX Coders receive future funding when we apply for additional NCWiT grants. This is absolutely crucial for running the program at no cost to participants and for running exciting talks, trips and events.
In line with the survey, we need your help and support to continue delivering meaningful computer science education and fun programming like talks with industry professionals and trips like the one to Google. It would be extremely helpful and appreciated if parents and children could take the time to write a testimony on the impact that XX Coders has had in their child’s life. Your testimonies will help us build a stronger application in seeking funding and support to continue running awesome computer science programs and activities for the Wyandanch community.
And lastly, I wanted to leave you with some links to press coverage XX Coders received:
- http://longisland.news12.com/clip/13511147/xx-coders-host-free-summer-camp-for-girls-in-wyandanch
- https://patch.com/new-york/halfhollowhills/xx-coders-club-half-hollow-hills-teaches-coding-young-women
To keep up with XX Coders news, you can follow us below:
I am looking very forward to seeing the girls again and to meeting new girls![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]