Category: Club News

Club News, Meeting Announcements & Notes

FVGCC 2021-2022 Year in Review

Robin

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!

Club News, Schedule

2019-2020 FVGCC Schedule Set

MMaki

We are so excited to be preparing for our 4th year of FVGCC meetings!  Our first meeting will be October 18th at 5:45 p.m. at 25N Coworking in downtown Geneva.*  We have set our 2019-2020 school year schedule and are working on this year’s curriculum, guest speakers, field trips, hack-a-thon plans and more.

Schedule

October 18 – Welcome & Intro to Slack

October 25 – Jump into Codesters (Python)

November – 1, 8, 15 – Codesters (Python), GitHub, & Glitch (Guest Speaker John Wright from Stack Overflow to talk about GitHub)

December – 6 – Codesters (Python) & Glitch (HTML, CSS) (Meeting at St. Charles Public Library)

December – 13 – Codesters (Python) & Glitch (HTML, CSS)

January (meetings @ Fox Build) – 10, 17, 24, 31 – Sewing – Arduino Project

February – 7, 21, (28 no school – fieldtrip?)

March – 6, 13, 20 – Codesters (Python) & Glitch (HTML, CSS), Tentative Hackathon planning

April – 17, 24 – iOS Swift Workshop (Tentative)

May – 1, 8 Farewell Party for our Seniors!

June 9, 2020 – Tentative FVGCC Hackathon

*All meetings take place from 5:45 p.m.-7:45 p.m. on Fridays at 25N Coworking, Geneva unless otherwise stated.

FVGCC welcomes new members each year.  Our club is for girls, ages 14-18, who are interested in pursuing careers in computing or are simply interested in learning about coding and all you can create with what you learn.  We look forward to welcoming back our current and new members.  See you in October!

 

Club News, Schedule

2018-19 FVGCC Schedule

Robin

Fox Valley Girls Coding Club will meet for the 2018-19 school year on Friday evenings from 5:45 p.m.-7:45 p.m. at 25N Coworking on River Street in downtown Geneva.  FVGCC is open to all girls, ages 14-18.  Limited spaces are available so please sign up now! Contact us at fvgcc12@gmail.com.

Technologies

October 2018 – December 2019: We will start with the basics of programming

January – February 2019: AI

March 2019: Project

  • Library Database of Seeds

April 2019: Gadget Month

  •  Awesome Shield has a pretty cool Arduino based hardware shield that can be used with their Ardiuno library in Adruino Studio. This might be a good stepping stone to more advanced bread-boarding with Arduino and Arduino Studio if the girls want to go in that direction! In the past, the girls have also used Makey Makeys to play the games they have built. We could take those to the next level and use some of the more advanced keyboard features. Robin also has a Hololens, Ozobot, Rasberry Pis to play with! Also, we can design models for 3D Printing using TinkerCad.

Meeting Schedule 2018-19

  • October
  • November
    • 2
    • 9
    • 16
    • 30
  • December
    • 7 – remote meeting?
    • 14
  • January
    • 11
    • 25
  • February
  • March
    • 8
    • 15
    • 22
  • April (Gadgets)
    • 5
    • 12
    • 26
  • May 3 – Last Class Cinco de Mayo Party!

 

Club News, Meeting Announcements & Notes, Schedule

2016-17 FVGCC Meeting Schedule Set!

MMaki

Starting on October 14, FVGCC will begin meeting for the 2016-17 school year Friday evenings from 5:45 p.m.-7:45 p.m. at 25N Coworking on 3rd Street in downtown Geneva.  This year’s coding projects include mobile app projects, completion of the Geneva Film Festival Website, and holding a Girls Make Apps workshop.  FVGCC is open to all girls, ages 14-18.  Limited spaces are available so please sign up now!  Contact us at fvgcc12@gmail.com.

Meeting Schedule

October – 14, 21, 28 – Scratch!

November – 4, 11, 18 – JavaScript

December – 9, 16 – Web (HTML, CSS & JavaScript with NetBeans)

January – 6, 13, 27 – Gaming (JavaScript on the Web, Di-sect the Snake Game, Jan 13 Robotics) 

February – 3, 10, 17 – Mobile (MIT App Inventor)

February – 4th @ 9am,  St. Charles Library AAUW talk

Feb 24 – skype with guest speaker

March – 7 @ 6pm Teen night at Geneva Library

March – 10 Security Speaker & Mobile

March – 17  – Advanced Mobile

April – 7, 21 – Advanced Mobile

April – 28 – Guest Speaker – CEO of Jelly Vision!

May – 5 – Last Meeting – Cinco de Mayo & Planning Session for 2017-18 school year

Club News

GoFundMe Campaign Launched on April 22

MMaki

We are so excited to be launching our first GoFundMe campaign: gofundme.com/fvgcc

As the first girls coding club in the Fox Valley, we are striving to provide high school girls in our community with hands on coding experience.  The funds raised from GoFundMe will be used in these exciting ways for 2016-17:

– A significant amount of money raised will go toward continuing to hold our weekly, school year meetings at 25N Coworking in Geneva, IL. This space allows our girls to learn coding in a modern, creative and tech ready space that is conveniently located near our club members’ high schools. Our goal is to eliminate any financial barriers to girls learning to code so club members do not pay to participate. The only requirement is that they come to meetings curious about coding.

– Through this campaign, we are working together, not only learning how to code, but also how to raise funding for important hardware – Makey, Makey kits for each club member – YES!  With Makey Makey Invention Kits, we can turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. Our club members can use Makey Makey for doing art, engineering, music, design and everything in between.

– Funds from this campaign will also be used for software – to cover our web hosting and sub-domain pages (these pages give our club members an opportunity to put what they are learning to work in their own real-world, creative space), and operating expenses, including marketing and recruiting, so we can expand our home-grown club to serve more girls in 2016-17 and beyond.

We hope you will take a minute to visit our GoFundMe page and choose to support FVGCC!