Guest blog post by Kira Molloy
Vocabulary Voyagers and Technology Captain
St Marys Anglican Girls School
A 4-day coding workshop during the summer holidays was offered to students in Years 7-10. This was a student lead workshop run by Technology Captain 2017, Kira Molloy as well as girls from Year 12 who gave up time out of their schoolholidays to assist her. These girls were Molly Brades, Sayalee Tak and DelaneyEastabrook. During this course, girls learnt how to not only code an app but also important entrepreneurial skills such as pitching, writing a business plan, branding and marketing. Industry experts from Avanade, Microsoft and Fogarty Foundation as well as inspiring women in STEM such as Lyn Beazley and Michelle Sandford also volunteered to help the girls and delivered insights into what its like to work in technology and the ever-growing importance that technology plays in our society.
By the fourth day, the girls’ apps were impressive and you could see their excitement as their apps started to come to life. The girls have big goals such as putting their apps onto the Google Play Store, which is a goal I know they will achieve. The final day ended with a ‘pitch-off’ where each team pushed through their nerves and pitched their apps in an attempt to win a waterproof and shockproof speaker each, as kindly donated by Technology One or a Selfie stick each for second prize as kindly donated by Avanade. The pitches were judged by experts from Microsoft and Avanade and a winner was chosen. Even though not all girls won they each walked away with other gifts such as pens, goodie bags and Frisbees as donated by Technology One, Avanade and Tech Girls Movement.
These girls have shown great potential and a weekly meeting will be held throughout the year so that they can keep developing their apps before entering their apps into the National Competition Search for the Next Tech Girls Superhero and later the global Technovation competition where if they are successful will accompany team Vocabulary Voyagers to Silicon Valley. We look forward to seeing what the girls produce in the next few months to come.
We at the Tech Girls Movement are so very proud of our #techgirls running this successful workshop!