We delivered our 3rd Virtual Girls Into coding last sunday via Zoom. The attendance was fantastic
Being a GenArm2Z ambassador, I was particularly excited about this event because it was sponsored by Arm and highlighted their commitment to working towards bridging the gender gap in technology and the importance of engaging girls with opportunities to explore an interest in STEM.
The event was organised into four different workshops, each with a dedicated breakout room. These included: a robot simulator session in which the the participants used lines of code to navigate their robot through a virtual environment; a 3D printing / 3D design workshop that allowed the girls to explore this growing area; the py creatures session which challenged the girls to design a virtual creature and then code it up to help it thrive & flourish; and I delivered a hands on robotics workshop where the girls were able to build and code a wheeled robot which I sent out to them prior to the event. A huge thank you to Llewelyn, Ben & Graham for all of the prep needed to deliver smooth and engaging sessions.
As well as the workshops, we were joined by two inspiring young ladies doing cool stuff in the world of STEM, and had the privilege of being able to listen to their empowering stories. Both guest speakers really shone through as excellent role models helping to pave the way for other young ladies and girls to consider further STEM activities, education & careers.
The first to address the girls was Vanessa Madu – Vanessa is a Mathematics student at Imperial College London. She is very passionate about increasing gender diversity in STEM and inspiring other young women to discover their potential. She is also a social entrepreneur and has founded and co-founded two different initiatives aimed to improve STEM diversity. As well as given us an insight into her tech journey, Vanessa delivered a great lighting talk and demo – “Technology meets Music: How well does a computer understand your singing”.
Our second guest speaker was Temi Olukoko – Temi is currently working as a Software Developer at BT within the Integration and Migration (API Gateways & Microservices) team, where she predominantly works with Spring Boot, Docker, and Apigee Edge, coding in JavaScript and Java. She wants to encourage more young black ethnic minorities to join the tech industry and support their career growth. She also advocates for STEM equality.
A massive thank you to Vanessa & Temi. They really helped the girls to become more aware of a world of possibilities within STEM and shared some very useful insights and advice.
The event was a success and once again I’m very proud of what we achieved together with the girls. Well done to Sumayyah for winning our interactive quiz at the end of the session – hope you enjoy the book.
A really big thank you to all of the girls, all of the parents (including mine), the mentors, the guest speakers and to Arm for helping to make this event a success.
A final, final thank you for all of the feedback that we received in the post-event survey – we received a 100% participation rate. Thank you for taking the time to help us improve what we do.
Virtual Girls Into Coding #4 will be on October 25th, Bring it on!
Avye
Hi, my name is Avye and I love making, coding, designing, exploring new technology and swimming! This site is about the things I get to experience, discover and enjoy. Welcome to my world!