Drawing with Code — By Laura Braun
Laura was so excited to participate in her first Women in Computing Day. She created a whole session that focused on how to draw using code. This is a concept that seems so strange at first. To young people, they think there is magic that goes on to make images appear on the computer screen. But after Laura’s session not only did girls understand how graphics can be formed, they also understood some basics to coding. That is pretty extraordinary. Laura did a great job of taking a dry topic like coding and making the session engaging and educational.
This is the third post in a series that documents the sessions at Women in Computing Day. You can read Sophie’s post on Design Thinking and Clark’s post on 3D Modeling on this blog as well.
I was the session lead with a goal to teach the the next general of women engineers how to do a small programming project where they can make a basic picture using code. I saw that this Khan Academy course was used successfully in past Women in Computing Days. I built off of previous success and adapted the session a little.
Rather than strictly sticking to having the girls draw a snowman, I decided to use this activity as a starting point. I kept the basic goal to have the girls “draw” a picture for themselves. While other activities during the day were more hands on, this session gives the girls a fun taste of programming. A snowman was not going to be enough. Once they got the basics I challenged the girls to make a self portrait. This is more personal and allowed the girls to explore the concepts. Students also learned how to use functions and determine the input for the output they desire, learned the importance of sequencing your function calls, and learned how to use documentation to use functions.
Materials
There aren’t many materials needed for this activity. We ended up purchasing 9 Raspberry Pis. We purchased these CanaKits from Amazon. They were reasonability cheap and came with everything that we needed. We also bought a few extra cases and DVI cables for Pis that we had on hand. With those materials and the monitors and mice we already had, we were all set.
One thing to take note of, you are going to need to think about space. There is a lot of leaning over girls and crowding. You want a space that is big enough that people can move around, but not so big that girls are spaced out. You want them leaning over and seeing what each other are doing. Also, all those machines can make a room hot!
For this session we had a total of three adults to help with programing. This left a ratio of about 1:3 adult per child. This ratio worked well.
What went well
The raspberryPi’s worked really well for what the activity required and fit compactly in a limited amount of space.
I used an analogy of giving instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a way to describe how to give instructions to a computer by writing code. It demonstrated how specific and particular about you need to be. It was a successful example that generated some laughter which is what I was going for.
What could be done better
The browsers saved the progress after each activity, so resetting all the browsers was time consuming to do in the 5–10 minutes between sessions. Next time, I would think of an easy way to clear the browsing data.
Also, the video that plays at the beginning of the activity is fairly drawn out and boring to listen to, so next time I would consider demonstrating myself and asking input from the audience so that I didn’t rely on that video.
I also tried to pair up the youngest age group so that they would have an easier time working together, but they would sit next to each other and one would watch while the other would be doing everything. I would probably put them all separately if I knew they were going to do that.
Pointers for others
For this activity, try to stay out of it until they ask you a question so that they can try to figure it out. Try to ask leading questions as to what to do next instead of telling them what the issue is, unless it’s something as simple as they mistyped. If one is having a difficult time and not asking questions, ask them if they have any questions, and try to help by answering the questions they ask.
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