How cool is computer science for girls? RI CODE shows just that at “Girls in Tech”!

7 August 2019

As it does every year, the Technical University of Munich organizes a summer program called “Girls in Technology,” with the goal of giving participants the opportunity to work as scientists, researchers, or engineers themselves in projects lasting several days and to conduct many interesting experiments in the process.

This year, the CODE Research Institute also participated and organized a two-day program titled “From Idea to Program” for 12- to 14-year-olds on August 5 and 6, 2019.

Behind every program lies a good idea and a concept for the steps needed to get from start to finish. Starting with a problem, we develop various theoretical processes, which are then programmed using the visual programming language Scratch. Just as in everyday life, there are many paths to the goal in computer science, so we’ll see who works most efficiently and reaches the goal the fastest. There are no limits to complexity, but will that actually get me to my goal quickly? By the end of this course, participants will be able to visualize problems using sequences of actions and successfully implement them using basic computer science concepts.

The goal of the summer program is to introduce girls to technology, specifically computer science. This can be done in a variety of ways, but it always combines theory with practice. Therefore, the first part of the two-day event focuses on theory. In other words, what does it take to turn an idea into a program? To explore this, the concept of loops and conditional statements was introduced in a playful way using traffic rules to get from a starting point to a destination. This was followed by an introduction to the visual programming language Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/), which provides an interactive graphical interface. Since it is browser-based and intuitive, the previously generated sequence of actions can be developed, tested step by step, and continuously expanded. In the afternoon, participants were able to develop and demonstrate their own small programs independently. The second day was entirely dedicated to the theme “Program Your Own PONG Game.” This was conducted as a competition, and each team was able to develop its own game based on a template. Creativity was given free rein, resulting in five different game variations with varying levels of difficulty and animations. The winning team, “YOURFRIENDSTEVE,” was rewarded with movie gift sets.

Photos: © SeCoSys/Schmitt