‘CCA Girls Who Code’ opens new season with community outreach and robotics

Canyon Crest Academy’s Girls Who Code club and affiliated all-girls Ravenettes Robotics team are ready to start the 2019-2020 school year with the goal to “inspire, educate and equip girls with invaluable technological and interpersonal skills.”

The Girls Who Code club started off the school year with a summer engineering workshop, where they taught basic engineering and programming concepts. The participants, ranging from 6th to 9th graders, came from seven local schools. Participants developed a variety of computer-aided design (CAD) skills to use in a capstone project, where students designed and 3-D printed their own keychains. Ravenettes Robotics team, which competes in the FIRST Tech Challenge, also started strategizing for the challenge at its official kickoff at Qualcomm auditorium in September.

This year, CCA Girls Who Code will expand its outreach and education effort by hosting a monthly lecture series and workshops teaching computer science and engineering, open to all middle and high school girls in the San Dieguito Union High School District. The fall lectures introduce engineering applications of several widely-used programming languages. The inaugural lecture, led by Alexis Wu and Sarah Golts, focused on Java and its usage in the FIRST Tech Challenge robotics competition. The second lecture, led by club mentors Anjali Gopinathan and Stefan Prestrelski, focused on C++ and the Arduino microcontroller. During the spring semester, the lectures will focus on STEM industries, and guest speakers will discuss their experiences and provide relevant advice.

For information about the club, robotics team or future lectures, visit www.ccagirlswhocode.weebly.com or contact Samantha Prestrelski (president) or Alexis Wu (vice president) at ccagirlswhocode@gmail.com.