Hackbright Academy serves post baccalaureate diverse individuals learning to code and become software engineers, but what about starting gender equality in tech early?
Here are some ideas for cultivating programmatic thinking in younger girls:
Everyday Childhood Encouragement of Experimentation and STEM Discovery!
Here are 6 things you can do right now to help your children become more resilient as future innovators and leaders:
Get a magazine subscription to Scientific American, Wired or Sky & Telescope (for future astronomers!). Google new terms and concepts with your child. Instead of fairy tales, tell your daughter science bedtime stories. As a parent, you have the opportunity to nurture positive gender stereotypes.
Make “11 Experiments That Failed”, “Rosie Revere, Engineer”, “When I Grow Up”, “The Paper Bag Princess”, and “Career Day” your coffee table books for growing young minds to peruse.- Read up on Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s Fixed vs. Growth Mindset concept to set up your child for success by fine-tuning her internal monologue around failure and growth.
Leave some crayons next to a copy of “LadyAda’s E for is for Electronics” coloring book from Adafruit Industries. Pro tip: bookmark the “young engineers” section of the website for intro to electronics kits and circuit plushies for aspiring young engineers!
Toys are an easy win for future inventors – like littleBits (electronic Legos), GoldieBlox (construction toys/books) and Roominate (imagine dollhouses with working circuits and fans!) to start.
Join the Girl Scouts! Explore the requirements for Girl Scout badges for STEM proficiency by completing projects for “Science and Technology” badges and “Innovation” badges!
Educational Programming Languages
There’s no shortage of educational programming languages for children – try filtering languages/apps by your child’s age. Here are the stand outs:
- Alice is a free 3D programming environment for kids (ages 10+), and there is a Storytelling Alice for your story-loving child.
For your iPad, there’s Daisy the Dinosaur – a free app that teaches programming fundamentals to kids (ages 3+). There is also Hopscotch, a free app that teaches kids to make apps.- Scratch is a robust MIT project to help kids (ages 8-16) develop animations, interactive stories and games. There is also App Inventor to build an Android app, which is best for junior high kids and older.
- Check out Blockly and Blockly Games, a set of educational games to teach programming to kids of all ages.
- Kodable is a great app for iPhone and iPad to teach kids (ages 5+) programming. Bonus: female founder Grechen Huebner!
Camps for Girls – Future Inventors, Programmers And Leaders
Silicon Valley parents sign up children (ages 6-18) for iD Tech camps at local universities to teach kids to program.
There’s also Alexa Cafe, the all-girls version of iD Tech camp for girls (ages 10-15).
Bay Area non-profit Iridescent runs a fantastic Curiosity Camp (ages 3-10) to introduce kids to the art of observation in nature, engineering, and robots!
There’s Girls Make Games with camps introducing girls (ages 11-14) to game design, game art and programming.
Don’t forget – you can enroll your daughters in Computer and LEGO® Summer Day Camps for children (ages 5-16) in the Bay Area, and check out the offerings at Digital Media Academy summer camps at UC Berkeley for children (ages 12-17).
There are also Summer Camps for students in grades 4-8 at the Tech in San Jose, California. For more summer activities for children, especially those around computers and technology, check out ActivityHero for classes and summer camps.
