Our apologies that end-of-semester events got in the way of posting this informatoin sooner.

Parents, please take 5 minutes to fill the form here. When you submit the form, it will send you a confirmation email with a link to the photo gallery for the meeting on April 21. Coders did an amazing job presenting their projects!

The College of Engineering will offer two camps for girls this summer. Please find information about these camps here. (Scroll down to "Summer Events.")

We enjoyed getting to know your daughters this spring. We hope the short foray into computing has piqued their interest and that they will continue exploring the fascinating world of computing this summer and beyond. See our Resources page for ideas. Thank you for encouraging your daughters that they can do whatever they put their minds to. Have a great summer!

We are wrapping up our group projects this week! Come in with a plan to finish up your impact project in this last working session. Please be sure to arrive before 10am so that your group mates are not waiting on you!

Our last meeting of SGWC will be a week from Saturday (April 21). Coders will demo their impact projects. Parents and siblings are invited to stay for the demos and some light refreshments. We'll send more information about logistics in the coming week.

Those of you who checked out a Micro Bit: Please remember to bring them to class tomorrow. We will love if you can briefly say what you did with them---or better yet, give a quick demo.

We are looking forward to seeing you this Saturday by 10 am.

If you will spend your spring break here in Lansing, you might be interested in the Google-Sponsored Spring Break classes offered by ITEC. Find details about several very fun classes at http://www.iteclansing.org/programs/grow-with-google/.

And remember: No SGWC this Saturday or next. We'll see you again on Saturday April 14.

Have a great spring break!

We love that several of you are learning about the micro:bit! When it comes to what you can do with this little device, the sky is the limit. You can program it to play music while displaying messages and simple images, detect and respond to motion and orientation and much more.

In addition to the tutorial on Grok Learning (https://groklearning.com/hoc/activity/virtual-pet/), there are many tutorials for fun projects using them on http://microbit.org/. You can chose to program the micro:bit using Python, Scratch, or Java Script. Using Python will reinforce ideas you have been learning in SGWC.

If you create an account on Grok Learning using your SGWC address, we will receive an automated verification email checking that you are an actual person (not a "bot"). As soon as we see the mail, we will verify your identity and let you know. Creating an account on Grok Learning will enable you to save your work and also give you access to lots of other tutorials and programming competitions.

Don't forget to bring the micro:bit with you this Saturday loaded and ready to demo to your class. If you have trouble loading your program onto the micro:bit, we can show you how on Saturday provided that you have saved your program in the cloud (e.g., on Grok Learning or in Codesters).

We have 10 micro:bits to loan out so everyone should have an opportunity to take one for a 'test drive' at some point. They are also very economical to purchase at https://www.adafruit.com/category/932 (you will want the 'Go Bundle,' which is currently sold out; add yourself to the waiting list to be notified when they are in-stock, which should be soon).

Please let us know if you have any questions or problems. We are excited to see what you do with the micro:bits this week!

A quick reminder: Our next meeting is Saturday March 17, when MSU will be back in session following our spring break.

It will be great if you are able to practice using the concepts learned in the first half of SGWC during this break. Regular practice and review are the key to becoming proficient in coding. We recommend any of the Python activities at https://groklearning.com/hoc/. (You will need to create an account to save your progress.)

For example, "Disease Epidemic (Python)" is a good one to review and practice:

• • printing output to the screen
• • getting input from the user
• • storing data in variables
• • integers and strings as different data types
• • mathematical manipulation of integers
• • making decisions using if statements

You can find many other activities at https://hourofcode.com/us/learn. If you have questions or need help in the next two weeks, send email to organizers@spartangwc.org.

Have a great next couple of weeks!

Last Saturday, coders worked with variables and wire framing. To get the most from our meeting this Saturday, coders may wish to review the first three lessons of codesters.com. The key to learning to code is practice.

In the first 4 meetings, coders also decided that the theme for their impact project will be Art. After this Saturday, they will have enough coding under their belts to begin implementation. In the meantime, they continue to research their theme and discuss their designs.

The main content of our website (www.spartangwc.org) is now in place. Please take a minute to see what you can find there. Let us know any additional content that would be helpful and other comments for improvement.

Finally, please be aware that there will be another event in the Engineering Building this Saturday starting shortly after SGWC ends. You can expect to see more activity than usual and more traffic as the morning progresses.

We look forward to seeing you this Saturday.

Girls Who Code offers a 7 week Summer Immersion Program for rising juniors and seniors. The application for 2018 is open. See http://girlswhocode.com/programs/.

Our sincere apologies to those of you who did not see the cancellation notice that we sent on Friday for yesterday's SGWC meeting. We sent the notice to parents@spartangwc.org, which forwards to a google group that forwards to all who joined the group. (We also sent it directly to a couple of parents who cannot join the google group.)

In the future, in addition to sending email notices, we will post notices of cancellation and other announcements as "News" on the Spartan GWC website (www.spartangwc.org). Unfortunately, this page had not been created in time for the cancellation this week. But now that it is ready, you should look there for latest updates regarding the clubs. Please take a minute to check it out.

Also, if you did not receive the notification sent Friday, please check for it in your auto-filtered mail folders (e.g., junk, promotions). If your mailer is automatically filtering messages sent to the parents list, please update your mail filters so that messages from the parent's list are delivered to a folder that you monitor regularly. Notify organizers@spartangwc.org if you are not able to locate the cancellation message in any of your mail folders.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and unnecessary risks to travel under the road conditions on Saturday morning. Also, thanks very much to Jessica Figueroa for staying with coders who were dropped off until their parents could return to pick them up!