High School Women Have Fun While Learning to Write Computer Software
For one week, 24 high school girls attended a one-week girls camp at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTDallas) where they learned to write software programs and have a great time.
Most of the girls had NO programming experience. Graduate and undergraduate Computer Science (CS) students taught the high school girls how to write computer software to:
- Create Animation in Alice using Drag-and-drop programming,
- Make Fancy Drawings using JavaScript,
- Control Robots using Python, and
- Develop Mobile Applications.
The designs created with computer software were used to create decals that were transferred to T-shirts with a hot iron.
All of the classes and most of the activities were held in one of the residence halls, on campus, at UTDallas. During breaks, the girls played ping-pong, pool, and other games in the recreation area. Female engineers from local companies joined the campers for lunch. After an evening of planned activities, the girls gathered in the dorm rooms and just enjoyed each others’ company.
The evenings provided a nice change-of-pace from the daily classes. During the first night, the scavenger hunt gave the girls an opportunity to visit various parts of campus — the swimming pool, racquet ball courts, basketball courts, the climbing wall, the library, the movie theater, the cafeteria, and some high-tech classrooms.
On the second night, several engineers from a local company gave the girls Latin Dance Lessons. On the third night, the girls enjoyed “Movie Night” which included some of the animation shorts, created earlier in the day. On the fourth night, the girls used enjoyed some unstructured time for practicing their new-found computer-software-skills and just hanging out with their new-found friends.
The camp was sponsored by the Computer Science (CS) Department and organized by Dr. Janell Straach, a Senior Lecturer in the CS Department.
The goal of the camp was to encourage girls to consider careers in Computer Science, hopefully at UTDallas. The Girl Camp is very popular and space is limited. Enrollment is open until the class is filled each spring. Previous programming skills are not required. This camp is posted, along with many other computer programming classes and workshops at: classes and workshops.
The Department of Computer Science at UT Dallas is one of the largest CS departments in the United States with more than 750 undergraduate, 500 master, and 125 PhD students. They are committed to exceptional teaching and research in a culture that is as daring as it is supportive.