January 26, 2019 – February 16, 2019

This winter WICS partnered with Erica Hsueh from Northwood High school for a second session of Bytes of Code! The National Center for Women in Technology awarded Erica with another round of funding for her successful Aspire IT program. This time we spent four Saturdays at the Roosevelt Walker Community Center in Santa Ana with 20 bright middle school girls! Together we explored app development, web development and robotics.

On the first day, the students were introduced to block-coding on Thunkable and were able to design and develop their very first iOS and Android apps. We kept the fun rolling on our second workshop with the Sphero Spark! Students broke up into teams and used their block-coding skills to navigate their spherical robots through mazes and other fun shapes. They were also introduced to web design on Weebly where they designed a website for the woman in tech that inspired them most. Feeling inspired, the students took a giant step forward into text-based coding on the third day with HTML and CSS. It was quite challenging at first but by project day everyone showcased beautiful websites for their friends and family!

On the last day of Bytes of Code, we took a trip to Google Irvine. A panel of engineers answered all the students’ burning questions about life at Google. And we were all in awe as they gave us a tour of the office space. After visiting the cafe, game rooms, and maker spaces at Google the students couldn’t wait to start making strides toward their future career in STEM!
To learn more about Bytes of Code visit https://www.bytesofcode.org/program. And sign up for the WICS newsletter to hear about opportunities with WICS!