A multi-week seminar hosted at the University of New Brunswick is helping pre-teen girls become proficient in computer science in hopes of enticing more young women to enter the field when they grow up.
READ MORE: Event aims to spread message that computers aren’t just for the boys
Cyber Girls is a three-part seminar, taught by computer science instructors at UNB, that aims to give girls the confidence to explore computer technology.
“I find in technology there’s not as many female role models in those kind of positions and jobs,” explained instructor Leah Bidlake. “I feel that having female computer scientists run this for them and teach them these things, we can show them that there are females out there working these roles and that that’s available to them.”
In their second session, the young girls were paired up and provided with a robotic sphere which they learned to program to do various tasks like move forwards and backwards, spin and change the colour of its lights.
“It was really fun because we got to play with a bunch of robots and different technology that we hadn’t played with before,” said 12-year-old Sierra Howe. “It was just a great experience.”
For some, the seminar was full of fun new activities while others say it helped them build on existing skills they hope to someday make a career out of.
“I would actually like to mostly help program computers that break down,” Lavina Lowther said.
“I definitely want to get into animation,” Katie MacGillivray said. “Because I really like working with computers and they’re really intricate in their design and everything.”
“We showed them about programming but that’s not the only focus here,” Bidlake said. “It’s working together, solving problems, figuring out ways to fix those problems and collaborating together.”
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