Rogers workshop encourages girls to try coding

NWA Democrat-Gazette/FLIP PUTTHOFF Megan Frohardt (center), an AR Girls Can Code event organizer, helps Elmwood Middle School students Madison Rhea (left) and Vera Pelphrey (right). Middle school and high school students enhanced their computer skills during the session held at New Technology High School in Rogers.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/FLIP PUTTHOFF Megan Frohardt (center), an AR Girls Can Code event organizer, helps Elmwood Middle School students Madison Rhea (left) and Vera Pelphrey (right). Middle school and high school students enhanced their computer skills during the session held at New Technology High School in Rogers.

ROGERS -- Sarah Bridges wasn't sure she'd actually like coding. Once she tried it, however, she was hooked.

"I ended up loving it," said Sarah, 14, a freshman at New Technology High School.

Women In Computer Science

Fewer than one in five college graduates who major in computer science are women. The percentage of computer scientists in the United States who are women has dropped from 37 percent in 1995 to 24 percent today.

Source: GirlsWhoCode.com

She was one of about 70 girls in grades seven through 12 from across the School District who participated in a day-long workshop, "AR Girls Code," at New Technology High School on Wednesday.

It was the second time in less than a year the district hosted the workshop, put on in partnership with the Community Venture Foundation of Fayetteville.

The event began with a panel of women from the community -- including representatives of Wal-Mart and J.B. Hunt -- discussing their work in computer programming. It continued with instruction on website development and the basics of HTML, CSS and Javascript, all led by women volunteers.

The students sat at tables in groups of three or four, each one working on a laptop.

Sarah's website focused on her interest in superheroes. It featured information and pictures about superheroes with links to other websites with additional information about them. By the end of the day, she was working on a quiz about the characters that she would add to the site.

Sarah participated in the same workshop in March. She said she found it much easier to grasp the material the second time around.

"I definitely recommend this for girls around our age. It's so much fun. You shouldn't be afraid to do it out of fear people will make fun of you," she said.

Nationally, women represent about a quarter of all workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Jeff Anderson, a computer science teacher at Rogers and Heritage high schools, said about 10 percent of his 125 students are girls. Those numbers, however, shouldn't suggest girls are less capable of achieving at computer science than boys are.

"Usually, the experience I have is (girls) get it better than boys," Anderson said. "They usually work at it a little bit harder and they usually understand it a little bit better."

Megan Frohardt, executive consultant at Startup Junkie Consulting of Fayetteville, volunteered at Wednesday's event. Startup Junkie is focused on building Northwest Arkansas' entrepreneurship and innovation community, and that includes developing a local talent pool through initiatives such as AR Girls Code, Frohardt said.

The students in Wednesday's workshop represented each of Rogers' four middle schools and three high schools. They came with varying degrees of knowledge of coding, Frohardt said.

Tram Mach, 13, a Kirksey Middle School eighth-grader, developed her website around the theme of food. She signed up for the workshop because she was interested in coding and engineering, she said.

"I think it was really fun overall. I would change a few things, but I really liked this day," Tram said.

Dawn Stewart, the district's career and technical education director, said research shows personal experiences with a career field, like what AR Girls Code offers, have much to do with the career a student chooses to pursue.

"It's hard to engage with coding from a textbook," Stewart said.

Coding is embedded into the curriculum in Rogers middle schools, so all students are getting some exposure to it, Stewart said.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette/FLIP PUTTHOFF Makayla Cook (second from left), a student at Lingle Middle School, picks up a computer Wednesday to use during the AR Girls Can Code session held at New Technology High School in Rogers. Girls from middle schools and high schools in the Rogers School District enhanced their computer skills during the event.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette/FLIP PUTTHOFF Haley Allgood with Startup Junkie helps Samantha Thiele, a student at Heritage High School, on Wednesday during the AR Girls Can Code event. High school and middle school students advanced their computing skills at the session held at Rogers' New Technology High School.

NW News on 11/30/2017

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