We were excited to welcome back our young coders for a day of review and project work time!

Before we dive into our fun activities, here's a few announcements.

Announcements

1. GET-IT Day

GET-IT Day is a field trip experience designed specifically for young girls in grades 4-8 and provides a unique opportunity to learn about the latest technologies and tech concepts in an interactive, hands-on environment.


With MCWT providing transportation and all necessary materials, students can focus on exploring the expo area and participating in engaging activities! This event will be held on May 16, 2023.

Learn more and register here

2. MCWT Camp Infinity

Coming to a city near you, girls in grades 5-12 are invited to join Camp Infinity and discover the exciting world of technology! This series of weeklong sessions will introduce the girls to computer and internet technologies through hands-on activities.

Each week of fun is held on Mondays-Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in various locations throughout the state. The girls will create websites with HTML/CSS, program Ozobot Evo and/or Finch 2.0 robots, and learn game design using Epic Games Unreal Engine. Expert instructors will guide the students through a range of engaging activities that will spark their imagination and creativity.

Learn more and register here

3. Bonus Hour

Join us for "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the welcome email)

4. Looking Ahead

We will not be meeting this week on 3/25. We'll see you again on Saturday, 4/1 at 10a ET for our seventh SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will be working further on exciting final projects!

5. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

This week we started off with a game of kahoot to review what we have learned so far.

After our icebreaker, we had our spotlight and watched a video about Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code.

We reviewed one of our previous lessons on copyright. Then, we jumped into coding time, to allow our coders to work on their final projects.

Finally, we ended the day with our standup and reflected on what we learned about and what challenged us.

Mentor Spotlight

SGWC is led, organized, and run by MSU students with the help of Teresa Isela Vandersloot and Dr. Laura Dillon , and we thought it would be fun to introduce a few of our team members each week.

To continue our mentor spotlight series, we'd like to introduce some Spring 2023 Virtual Mentors!

Thanks for making last Saturday a blast, everyone. We can't wait to see you in less than two weeks!

-The SGWC Team

We were excited to welcome back our young coders for a day of review and CSS fun with lots of colors, styles, and fonts!

Before we dive into our fun activities, here's a few announcements.

Announcements

1. GET-IT Day

GET-IT Day is a field trip experience designed specifically for young girls in grades 4-8 and provides a unique opportunity to learn about the latest technologies and tech concepts in an interactive, hands-on environment.


With MCWT providing transportation and all necessary materials, students can focus on exploring the expo area and participating in engaging activities! This event will be held on May 16, 2023.

Learn more and register here

2. MCWT Camp Infinity

Coming to a city near you, girls in grades 5-12 are invited to join Camp Infinity and discover the exciting world of technology! This series of weeklong sessions will introduce the girls to computer and internet technologies through hands-on activities.

Each week of fun is held on Mondays-Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in various locations throughout the state. The girls will create websites with HTML/CSS, program Ozobot Evo and/or Finch 2.0 robots, and learn game design using Epic Games Unreal Engine. Expert instructors will guide the students through a range of engaging activities that will spark their imagination and creativity.

Learn more and register here

3. Bonus Hour

Join us for "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the welcome email)

4. Looking Ahead

We will not be meeting this week on 3/25. We'll see you again on Saturday, 4/1 at 10a ET for our seventh SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will be working further on exciting final projects!

5. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

This week we started off with a game of would you rather in the in-person cohort.

After our icebreaker, we had our spotlight and watched a video on a systems engineer who used Firebase to help her community by creating a monitoring system for the detection of landslides.

We reviewed our last lesson on lists and tables. Then, we jumped into our final lesson of the program, on styling our websites using CSS. We learned about changing fonts, colors, and other styling elements.

At the end of the lesson, we reintroduced our final project and started brainstorming ideas in CodeHS. We gave the students time to work on our CSS exercises and/or brainstorm and start the project. Finally, we ended the day with our standup and reflected on what we learned about and what challenged us.

Mentor Spotlight

SGWC is led, organized, and run by MSU students with the help of Teresa Isela Vandersloot and Dr. Laura Dillon , and we thought it would be fun to introduce a few of our team members each week.

To continue our mentor spotlight series, we'd like to introduce some Spring 2023 In Person Mentors!

Thanks for making last Saturday a blast, everyone. We can't wait to see you in less than two weeks!

-The SGWC Team

We welcomed back our coders with a fun day of review, learning about adding lists and tables to their websites! We were eager to teach more exciting and advanced material, and hope the students are just as excited to learn them.

Before we dive into a full recap of Saturday's meeting, we'd like to share a few announcements.

Announcements

1. GLADL Coding Club

The Grand Ledge Area District Library is starting a new Code Club! GLADL will be using the curriculum from Girls Who Code intended for 3rd to 5th grade. But GLADL is not restricting the club to only girls. Any kid who is in 3rd grade and up, or homeschool equivalent is welcome. No coding experience is necessary!
The Code Club will be meeting every Wednesday from 6-7pm starting March 1st and running through May.
Kids should register for the club on Girls Who Code HQ and use the club code MI45609 to register for GLADL's club. Please pass the word on to kids you know who might be interested and sign up your own children if they would like to participate.

For additional information, contact Carol Robinson:
collections@gladl.org
Youth Services Specialist
Grand Ledge Area District Library
131 E. Jefferson St.
Grand Ledge, MI 48837

2. Bonus Hour

Join us for "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the reminder email)

3. Looking Ahead

Due to MSU's spring break, we will not be meeting on 3/4 or 3/11. We'll see you again on Saturday, 3/18 at 10a ET for our sixth SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will start diving into styling our websites with CSS!

4. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

We started off the day with an icebreaker sharing our favorite holidays and family traditions.

After our icebreaker for our spotlight we watched a video of a volcanologist passionate about the climate and pushing more women in STEM.

We then reviewed what we earned in previous lessons including formatting, links, and images. We then dove right into our lesson on lists and tables and learned how to use new tags to format text into ordered/unordered lists and into tables.

Towards the end, we gave a brief introduction of the final project for students who wanted to get started on their project during our two week break. We ended the lesson with our standup — reflecting on what went well, what was challenging, and what our students' favorite exercises were. We make sure to listen to the students feedback, but don't hesitate to reach out to info@spartangwc.org if you have any questions or concerns!

Mentor Spotlight

SGWC is led, organized, and run by MSU students with the help of Teresa Isela Vandersloot and Dr. Laura Dillon , and we thought it would be fun to introduce a few of our team members each week.

To continue our mentor spotlight series, we'd like to introduce the Spring 2023 Virtual Lead Mentors!

Thanks for making last Saturday a blast, everyone. We can't wait to see you after our break!

-The SGWC Team

The Michigan State University community experienced a tragic violent assault on February 13, 2023. In response, MSU cancelled all classes from the time of the assault until Monday February 20. Over this time, our Spartan Girls Who Code team has been working to navigate the aftermath of this event.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as this healing process is ongoing. We are doing our best to provide valuable coding lessons to club participants while also accommodating needs of MSU student employees.

We will inform all participants of any future schedule changes due to this event through both email and this News page. We strive to post notices of any changes as timely as possible, but at least by Saturday 8 a.m. for changes to a Saturday morning session and by Thursday noon for changes to a Thursday Bonus Hour.

Congratulations to coders who attended this Saturday and learned how to include images in their websites! We can't wait to see what you will make of your new found skills in the coming weeks!

Before we dive into a full recap of Saturday's meeting, we'd like to share a few announcements.

Announcements

1. Bonus Hour

Join us for "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the welcome email)

2. Looking Ahead

We'll see you again this Saturday, 2/11 at 10a ET for our fourth SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will review material from last week and learn about copyright!

3. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

The day started off with a speed friending session with fellow coders. The coders were encouraged to get to know one another by answering prompts such as "What topic would you like to give a talk on?" and "If you were a candy bar, what kind would you be?". We heard some great responses!

After our icebreaker, we had two spotlight videos on UX writing to give the students an insight into careers related to what they are learning.

Once finished, we reviewed what we have learned from the previous weeks including formatting text, links, and attributes. We jumped into our lesson on images and learned about the image tag and its attributes.

We ended things with small mentor-student group discussions, reflecting on what went well, what was challenging, and what students are looking forward to at next Saturday's session. We make sure to listen to the students feedback, but don't hesitate to reach out to info@spartangwc.org if you have any questions or concerns!

Mentor Spotlight

SGWC is led, organized, and run by MSU students with the help of Teresa Isela Vandersloot and Dr. Laura Dillon , and we thought it would be fun to introduce a few of our team members each week.

To continue our mentor spotlight series, we'd like to introduce the Spring 2023 In-Person Lead Mentors!

Thanks for making last Saturday a blast, everyone. We can't wait to see you this Saturday!

-The SGWC Team

We welcomed back our young coders on Saturday morning for another day of fun with HTML and CSS! It was amazing to see the students' excitement and enthusiasm to learn. Students were eager to learn new HTML tags and even asked additional questions related to advanced skills.

Before we dive into a full recap of Saturday's meeting, we'd like to share a few announcements.

Announcements

1. Bonus Hour

Join us for "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the welcome email)

2. Girls Who Code Summer Programs

The national organization of Girls Who Code is offering two summer opportunities for high school students.

The Summer Immersion Program (SIP) is a live, virtual, 2-week introduction to computer science course for 9th-11th graders. Students will learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while getting an inside look into the tech industry through company sponsors.

The Self-Paced Program is a free remote computer science course for 9th-12th graders who prefer not to adhere to a strict schedule. Participants can choose to earn beginner-level badges in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (for web development) or an intermediate-level badge in Python (for cybersecurity). Students will also have the chance to build a community through weekly sessions and Girls Who Code activities.

Find more details and register at https://girlswhocodesm.smapply.io/

3. Looking Ahead

We'll see you again this Saturday, 2/4 at 10a ET for our third SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will review material from last week and learn about images + copyright!

4. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

Mentors welcomed participants — as students rolled in mentor-student bonding had already begun!

To start off the day, our in-person cohort divided into groups and discussed five things we all have in common with one another, and our virtual cohorts worked to navigate and complete an escape room together.

After our icebreaker, we watched two videos for our spotlight about the intersection between fashion, art, and code!

We kicked off the Spring 2023 version of Spartan Girls Who Code on Saturday with enthusiastic students and incredible mentors — we hope your student is just as excited as we are for the coming weeks!

We as a club are so excited to introduce the world of coding to your student! Computer science and programming is all around us in everything we do, and it is so much fun to learn! During this course, we want all students to remember that they are learning something new, it might be challenging at times. But! — learning to overcome those challenges and how to have fun with it is just as important as learning the material. We hope your student keeps this in mind as we continue throughout the program.

Before we dive into a full recap of Saturday's meeting, we'd like to share a few announcements.

Announcements

1. Participant Pre-Survey

Students were encouraged to fill out the 2023 SGWC Participant Pre-Survey ( In-person form, Virtual form) at Saturday's meeting, but not everyone submitted their responses. If your student has not yet completed the pre-survey, please have them do so before this Saturday's meeting.

2. Bonus Hour

Continuing as a Technovation and Girls Who Code tradition, we'll be hosting a SGWC "bonus hour" every Thursday from 6:00-7:00p ET (beginning this Thursday, 1/26) open to all SGWC participants. SGWC mentors will be available on Zoom during the bonus hour to resolve technical difficulties, dive deeper into the coding concepts we've learned, or to talk about computer science in general!

Use the Zoom link below to join us for a bonus hour of fun each week. The password for our bonus hour was sent in the welcome email.

• Zoom Link: https://msu.zoom.us/j/94658238348 (password is provided in the welcome email)

3. Girls Who Code Summer Programs

The national organization of Girls Who Code is offering two summer opportunities for high school students.

The Summer Immersion Program (SIP) is a live, virtual, 2-week introduction to computer science course for 9th-11th graders. Students will learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while getting an inside look into the tech industry through company sponsors.

The Self-Paced Program is a free remote computer science course for 9th-12th graders who prefer not to adhere to a strict schedule. Participants can choose to earn beginner-level badges in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (for web development) or an intermediate-level badge in Python (for cybersecurity). Students will also have the chance to build a community through weekly sessions and Girls Who Code activities.

Find more details and register at https://girlswhocodesm.smapply.io/

4. Looking Ahead

We'll see you again this Saturday, 1/28 at 10a ET for our second SGWC meeting of the spring, where we will review material from last week and begin learning about text + links in webpages!

5. Questions?

As always, please reach out with any questions / concerns / ideas / feedback to info@spartangwc.org.

Meeting Recap

Mentors welcomed participants — as students rolled in mentor-student bonding had already begun!

To kick things off, each virtual cohort participated in a Show & Tell Icebreaker and the in-person cohort decorated their nametags and shared their superpower of choice. Coders and mentors shared an item that they cared about as a way to get to know a bit about one another. Engagement was high, and all enjoyed learning cool information about their peers!

Following the icebreaker, participants completed a program pre-survey which will help us evaluate and improve SGWC in future years. We've learned a lot from pre- and post-surveys in past years—we truly appreciate our participants' thoughtful feedback! If your student did not complete the pre-survey, please encourage them to do so at the link that applies to them: In-person form, Virtual form.

Next, each cohort collaborated to write a club contract setting goals and expectations for future meetings, and set up CodeHS accounts for use in the coming weeks. We'll be working through the "Web Design (Matisse)" course offered by CodeHS!

Finally, we encouraged participants to fill out an end-of-meeting survey to gauge comfort with material covered in the meeting, and received overwhelmingly positive responses! It's always scary to try something new, so we were glad to hear students that the students got off to a good start. That said, we want to make sure everyone has a great time at SGWC this spring—so if you're having issues with anything, please send us an email at info@spartangwc.org.

Mentor Spotlight

SGWC is led, organized, and run by MSU students with the help of Teresa Isela Vandersloot and Dr. Laura Dillon , and we thought it would be fun to introduce a few of our team members each week.

To kick off our mentor spotlight series, we'd like to introduce the Spring 2023 Admins! They have been working hard to get you all registered and keep you informed of plans for going forward.

Thanks for making last Saturday a blast, everyone. We can't wait to see you this Saturday!

-The SGWC Team