This summer, we will use our newsletter to highlight a variety of people, organizations, and resources that are doing work to broaden participation and expand equitable and engaging computer science and STEM opportunities. We are honored to work in this space along with so many talented and passionate individuals and organizations and want to help bring attention to their work.
This Week’s Spotlight: Code Savvy's Values - Community & Empowerment
This week we wanted to again spotlight two of our Code Savvy values - community and empowerment. We have been working hard this Summer to continue providing programs and inspiring students even in the wake of the pandemic and racial unrest.
Our value of empowerment is “that the next generation of computer science professionals is already in all of our communities. When provided with the resources and mentorship unavailable in a traditional school setting, they will be empowered to transform the world.” And our community value is “to nurture networks of learners to create a supportive community for change.”
The following are comments from our participants that illustrate our impact.
“With coding, you can do anything, you can build a world, you can control a car, you can go to the moon.”
“Students really discover that programming is not some big scary thing where you just type numbers, it's not something that's complicated.”
“It's really incredible what I can create with even just a few lines of code”
On Fridays this Summer we held CS and Ed Zoom Check-Ins. Our network of educators and other interested partners shared Computer Science resources, events, stories, distance learning practices, and other interesting education tidbits. The conversations were lively and energizing.
Dan McCreary, our AI Racing League Director, and Marie Gottschalk, our CoderDojoTC and Rebecca CoderDojo director, have spent the summer planning and organizing our move to virtual Dojo programming. Dan has led a group at Optum providing mentoring sessions for Optum employee’s kids and our mentors are now trained in adding new content. We are set to have our first test virtual CoderDojo in mid-September and then go live for larger groups in October.
We are continuing to empower all youth and educators with the knowledge, skills, and support to create with technology, interrupting and counteracting gender and racial gaps in computing. We are creating opportunities for hands-on computer science learning that inspires learners to transform the future.
This Week's Project Inspiration Theme: Labor Day
September 7th is Labor Day!
The first Monday in September is a day to celebrate the social and economic achievements of American workers. During the global pandemic, everyday Americans have been risking their lives doing critical jobs that keep us safe, healthy, and supplied with basic necessities. This week we want to celebrate those workers and all they do for us and our community. Use this CS to Go tutorial to help come up with a list of things to do to appreciate those workers and local heroes. Remember, this is just a suggestion; use your own creative genius to create a personalized project!
We hope you create a CS project in honor of Labor Day! If you do, please share it with us.
Share Your CS to Go Projects!
How to Share: We invite CS to Go with Code Savvy participants to consider sharing your projects publicly with the Code Savvy and greater #MNCodes community via video with Flipgrid. We can’t wait to see what you create! Please be sure to follow online safety guidelines and get adult permission before sharing. You can find our Privacy Policy here.
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