Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls

LOG: ORCSGIRLS JUNIOR To: ORCSGirls -- From: Katie Bates June 14, 2024 -- 7:30 am Hi, I'm Katie Bates, the founder of ORCSGirls Junior. Today marks the first-ever ORCSGirls Junior in-person camp! I'm super nervous, but "fake it 'till you make it", right? In case you don't know, Junior is a program I conceptualized in the summer of 2022 with the goal of reaching girls in grades 2-4 who are interested in coding and computer science. I kickstarted the program with a virtual reality camp last summer - my very first time teaching! The first day was pretty daunting, but teaching is the most incredible experience. This year's camp is about robots. Today we will use  Edison robots  ( https://meetedison.com/ ) to teach the Junior girls how sensors, block coding, and robot-to-robot communication works. I have a couple of activities for them to do; you can find the link to my slides here ( Edison Robot slides ). Wish me luck! --Katie To: ORCSGirls -- From: Katie Bate...

    It's 1 PM on a Monday afternoon. 13 elementary school girls are waiting patiently for the camp to start. The excitement and anticipation can be felt through the Zoom screen as I start to talk... "Hi, my name's Katie! Welcome to the first ever ORCSGirls Jr. Virtual Reality Camp! Let's get started."      Last summer (2022), I had the idea to run a coding camp for young girls through ORCSGirls. Regular ORCSGirls classes are only open to girls in 5th through 10th grade, and as a middle schooler, I wanted 2nd-4th grade girls to have a chance to explore computer science too. The goal of ORCSGirls is to inspire young girls to pursue careers in technology, and giving them that spark as early as 2nd grade is an awesome opportunity.      A lot of planning went into making this camp possible. I started with an interest survey, which is how I chose virtual reality as the topic for the camp. Then I spent months gathering a team of counselors, making forms,...

 In July 2022, ORCSGirls ran the Environment Monitoring Camp for the second time. At the camp, the girls learned how to take environmental readings through a device called the  ESP32-S2 TFT Feather . Using  Adafruit ’s technology, they programmed a working sensor that they could access through their computers. They used Adafruit’s  IO program  to create unique ways to display their data. They also made an app on  code.org  using an API from Adafruit. Two of the counselors, Katie and Kristen, are experienced with environmental technology. After participating in the camp, they expanded their knowledge to create a  ProjectCSGirls  entry. Now they’ve written about their experiences to share here. Katie shares her experience… “When I took the Enviro Monitoring Camp last summer, I learned so much about sensors and the environment. Afterwards, I kept exploring technology and took more environment monitoring classes. Eventually Kristen and I paired u...

It's a wrap. Twelve girls in grades 7-10 participated in our Smart Robots Camp held at the Blount County Public Library in Maryville, TN from June 27-30. This camp was originally scheduled for March 2020 and was the first event  Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls cancelled because of the pandemic.  During the four day camp the girls learned about machine learning, coding in Python and programming the smart JetBot robot, and teach it to avoid obstacles and follow objects or roads. Pair programming where girls team up and act as 'drivers' and 'navigators' working with the robots turned out to be a great way to learn and work as a team - in the words of Leah, a raising 8th grader " The Smart Robot Camp was an amazing experience where I not only learned more about robots, but discovered the possibilities of pair programming and teamwork. ” Training the robots to avoid obstacles (and not drive off the table) or follow a road really illustrated the concept o...