“GC3-Girls Code. Create. Connect.” Introduces K-12 Girls to Technology

GC3-Girls Code. Create. Connect. will teach fifteen girls from Barr Elementary to code using the Wonder Workshop Dash Robot and an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. The girls in this program will learn to code in Scratch to communicate ideas, solve problems and design projects. Zoe Bush, an NCWIT Aspirations in Computer award recipient will lead the GC3-Girls Code. Create. Connect, which she designed in partnership with the Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

Recent data show that girls comprise 56% of all Advanced Placement (AP) test-takers and 47% of all AP Calculus test-takers, but only 22% of all AP CS test-takers. At the college level, women earn just 17% of all computer and information sciences bachelor’s degrees. The “near-peer” approach of enlisting high school or college students to teach younger peers can be an effective way to encourage girls to consider a field they might not have otherwise pursued.

“It is important that girls and young women of color see that there are better opportunities and more lucrative careers in computer science and technology. The lack of girls choosing computer technology is not only depriving girls of opportunities, it’s depriving society of technological innovation with more diverse perspectives and ideas,” said Shante Crockett. “We hope our program will encourage more girls to see themselves doing computing.”

GC3-Girls Code. Create. Connect. is one of 75 programs nationwide to occur in NCWIT AspireIT Round 7 (June 15, 2017 through October 14, 2017), an initiative of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). To date, NCWIT has gifted more than $800,000 to 300 programs, providing an estimated 240,000 instruction hours to nearly 8,000 girls in 40 states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands since 2013. AspireIT aims to engage more than 10,000 girls by 2018.

NCWIT AspireIT is a component of NCWIT Aspirations in Computing (AiC), a sweeping national talent development initiative for young women in computing, from kindergarten through graduate school. AiC is supported nationally by Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Bloomberg, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions Foundation, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, and the Symantec Corporation.