We’re putting on a Coding Bootcamp for Stemettes who would like to increase their coding skills and maybe even enter a UK coding competition for teens, called YRS Festival of Code.
What is YRS?
Young Rewired State is an independent global network of kids aged 18 and under who have taught themselves to code. YRS introduces these children to like-minded peers at events around the world where they use freely available open data to make websites, apps and algorithms to solve real-world challenges.
And this event?
YRS Festival of Code 2014 is a week-long event held at local centres that then convene in Plymouth in which teams of developers aged 12 to 18 produce an application/app/site that uses publicly available data. This requires a range of skills which would roughly include:
Brainstorming | Storyboarding | Team working | Digital design | Image capture / manipulation | Video capture / editing | Web design (inc. HTML, CSS) | Data analysis | Programming (inc. data fetching)
All apps/applications/sites will have an HTML/CSS user interface so this is the ‘common skill’ that is required status by YRS, but it is not the only requirement.
What are the Stemettes running?
We spoke to the organisers of this YRS event and wanted to be able to offer a centre in London in August where girls aged 12-18 who have no, very little, or even a lot of technical experience. Therefore, to enable your daughter niece or students to get involved, we will be running a 3-day workshop (10 – 5 p.m.) before the YRS event in partnership with City University. The 3-day boot camp will include:
- Day 1 [April 12th]:
- Introduction to HTML, CSS, Javascript (programming)
- Introduction to public data sources
- Brainstorming
- Day 2 [May 10th]:
- Idea development (establishing skills requirement)
- Introduction to data fetching and display
- Day 3 [June 7th]:
- Developing your idea.
- Brainstorming 2 – Prep for YRS
- Team formation
Working with the Stemettes, any girl partaking in this full 3-day course will be sufficiently prepared to join the other young people taking part in YRS at one of the regional centres. We don’t want any girls to be excluded due to lack of experience, and this will go a long way to preventing that!
~ Team Stemette
