This Summer the XXCoders Annual Summer Camp was held in the Wyandanch Youth Center’s computer room. The girls started out with learning Scratch, which is a user friendly coding website made by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that many K-12 students are now using. Scratch maintains many introductory coding and programming processes such as basic functions, commands, operators, and variables. With the basic commands, functions, etc. being introduced by Scratch, the girls were able to move onto Python 3. Python 3 is an interface that allows users to generate a unique piece of code that generates any output with a more modernized code. For example, due to Python 3 being the most updated Python language the object oriented programming is quicker with a more efficient outcome. On the first week the girls were also given speeches by 2 guest speakers Anissa from Girls Inc. and Devra from Applicaster to talk about confidence and women in technology fields.
The XXCoders then moved onto heavier pieces of code throughout their last week of camp. The girls moved onto the HTML/Java languages for their own personal blogs. Overall each student had over 300+ lines of code generated for their blogs which were separated into 3 different files on interfaces such as Sublime Text Editor. Another guest speaker, Shana from Kelly Services and Long Island Women in Technology also came to talk to the girls about minority representation in work fields. On the second to last day of camp the girls headed to Chelsea, NY for a trip to Google NYC. The campers were introduced to the main Google building and given a tour throughout one of the highest floors that Google has to offer. Then, the girls were taken to Google: Code Next, a building where different high school and college students/interns work on projects and applications through Google. We finished off our trip to Google NYC with stopping at the Growing with Google building, we were shown the different workshops that Google employees known as Googlers offer to the public. On the last day of our XXCoders camp the girls finished typing up the code for their personal blogs. Overall everyone had fun with the coding, the 3 guest speakers to represent themes such as confidence and women in technology, along with our special Google NYC trip. We can’t wait to see what XXCoders has to offer next time!
