Fox Valley Girls Coding Club had a small and energized group girls for the 2021-2022 school year. This meant that we were able to do a few projects that we had been a little shy to attempt with larger groups. In this blog post, I wanted to review a few of the activities that we did and what we learned.
During our first meeting, we ALWAYS ask the girls what they want to learn and then we try our best to make sure we at least touch on each of those requested subjects. This year, the most popular request was for web development and game development.
Slack and GitHub – Over the years, we have figured out that the two pieces of software that all of the girls need to know how to use are Slack and GitHub. Slack is how we communicate and GitHub is how we share code.
Web Development with Replit and Glitch – One of the easiest ways to jump into simple web development is with online IDE tools like Replit and Glitch. We used both of these this year to learn about the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python.
Game Development with Unity – We set up our Unity Development environments and we all build our own versions of the Rolla-ball game together. This gave the girls some great experience with professional game developer tools and a physics engine!
Prep for a Hack-a-thon – Each year, we have a group of girls from the club that go to a local hack-a-thon together. Hack-a-thons are events that usually last between 8-48 hours in which groups of developers build a piece of software. Those projects are then judged at the end of the event. Often, prizes are given out for the best projects. This year, girls from our club helped form a team that competed in the Hack For the World Hackathon in Naperville. They won the Judge’s Choice Award – check out their project here!
Some of this year’s projects can be found on our GitHub Repo!
Even though we were completely remote this year, we really had a fabulous group of girls and I think they really had a great time and learned a lot! See you next year!
Fox Valley Girls Coding Club 