AspireIT Program: Making a Difference - Girls, Technology, and Social Change

Our Aspire IT Camp, Making a Difference – Girls, Technology, and Social Change, has currently completed 8 out of the 10 scheduled weeks of camp at Hodges University in Fort Myers, Florida. We have 17 girls from 13 different middle schools, ranging from 10 – 14 years old in attendance. Most of our girls have had no formal computer science classes at school, and none of the girls have had any prior programming experience before attending this camp. The girls have utilized Kodu, App Developer, and Scratch to learn how to build a program. During the first 5 weeks, we had a structured curriculum including various projects to teach the girls the basics in each of the programs. Starting in week 6, we allowed the girls the freedom to create their own apps and games based on the vision of our social change topic – finding shelters and homes for lost and unwanted pets. The girls chose to work in groups of two to three and they selected which in program they wanted to develop their project. After week 8, we have several groups of girls that have created multi-level games in Kodu and several groups of girls that are in the process of creating interactive apps for smart phones! During week 10 the girls will showcase their projects to the group.

Throughout the course of our camp we have introduced several science experiments to give the girls variety, to focus on making STEM education fun, and to allow them to stretch their legs a bit. The girls come to camp very excited each Saturday morning and their parents are very vocal about how much fun the girls tell them they are having at camp! This is an amazing group of young ladies and we couldn’t be happier about the excitement that this camp has generated about technology and computer programming!