I want to go to Camp! Who knew learning to code could be so fun?
As a woman who came to know and love the power of coding as an adult, it is such a thrill to be a part of an organization that is giving girls the opportunity to learn coding at camps hosted by Hackergal.
Programs offered through the Hackergal Network are targeted at middle school-aged girls and offered at a low cost so that every girl — no matter her socio-economic situation — has the opportunity to participate. Hackergal’s 2018 Spring Break Coding Camp will be held March 12–16, 2018 at Ryerson University in Toronto.
We are thrilled to introduce girls to Swift, the powerful programming language created by Apple, during our 2018 Spring Break camp. Using Swift Playgrounds on iPad, girls will be able to write real code, the same code that developers use to develop apps.
The program caters to all ages and coincides with Everyone Can Code, a comprehensive set of resources created by Apple that helps teach code to students from kindergarten to college to university. The belief that everyone can code directly maps to Hackergal’s belief that girls can love coding as much as boys, if only given the opportunity to try.
In Canada, while the gender gap continues to pose a great concern for the business and technology industry, an even bigger concern is the gap in the number of young girls taking computer science courses in their high-school and post-secondary years. Earlier this year, a national coding survey commissioned by Actua discovered more than 50 percent of boys said they were extremely interested in careers involving coding or programming whereas only 27 percent of girls expressed similar interest.
The Hackergal Network was created in 2015 to address this specific issue.
Why is this important?
Roughly half of the jobs in the top income quartile — defined as those paying $57,000 or more per year — are in occupations that commonly require applicants to have at least some computer coding knowledge or skill, according to a recent analysis of 26 million U.S. online job postings by job market analytics firm Burning Glass and Oracle Academy, the philanthropic arm of Oracle focused on computer science education.
Matoula Mitropoulos, Managing Director of Partnerships for Hackergal, says it best, “Coding is the new literacy. The fact is all the great jobs in the future, no matter the field, will go to people who can code. If we want women to be a part of the fastest growing job markets, we need to introduce girls to coding earlier in the education process.”
Staples Canada has stepped up to serve as the title sponsor of Hackergal’s 2018 Spring Break Coding Camp, opening the door for 25 Middle School girls to participate in the camp program. Hackergal will provide the tools and training to teach these girls how to code using Swift Playgrounds and other educational toys that code with Swift such as Meebot’s and Sphero Robots.
Relationships with industry leaders like Staples are critical to the success of programs like Hackergal. If we want to include every middle school-aged girl in Canada, without exclusion, we need the support of community partners who share our vision.
“We are excited to be a part of the Hackergal movement,” said Alessandra Saccal, Senior Communications Manager at Staples Canada. “Hackergal’s mission to expose more Middle School girls to coding so that they might consider a career in a computer science related field, aligns with our own values to support education initiatives in our community. We hope that through our combined efforts we can help narrow the gender gap and change the perception that coding is just for men.”
For information about Hackergal’s 2018 Spring Break Camp, visit: https://www.picatic.com/event15169051854387
