What We Learned from Hosting a Tech Camp for Girls
We recently hosted more than 120 bright and enthusiastic girls at our Vivint Innovation Center for a four-day computer science and technology camp. Our campus was filled with girls ages 8 to 18, eager to learn how to hack, design and code.
While women comprise 57 percent of professional occupations in the U.S., just 26 percent of professional computing jobs are held by women. Camps like these play a pivotal role in inspiring girls to pursue STEM careers and contribute to technology innovation.
Here are three takeaways from our experience:
STEM education is broad, and camps should reflect that.
Programming tends to command the lion’s share of attention in STEM, but each aspect deserves some of the spotlight. We love that Girls Go Digital, which we partnered with for the camp, covers a wide range of disciplines and organized hands-on activities around circuits, digital illustration, micro controllers, digital video and photography, and much more.
A few of our favorites included:
· Programming pocket-sized Ozobot and Sphero robots
· Building websites using HTML and CSS
· Learning to program in Swift Playgrounds and Python
· Programming a Raspberry Pi and Sense HAT to broadcast sensor readings to a website
· Learning basic soldering skills and designing and building e-textiles from LilyPad
Today’s tech companies require a breadth and depth of expertise. Vivint Smart Home is not only home to software engineers, but also to industrial and UX designers, mechanical and electrical engineers, product engineers and data scientists. There’s a tendency to pigeonhole girls interested in STEM into coding, but camps like these expose them to the many paths available.
These camps have a huge impact on participants…
My daughter attended the camp and was excited to learn how she could combine her innate passion for art and storytelling with technology. Using the Bloxels app and pixel kits, she built a pixel-powered video game. When she got home that day, she was so excited to show me the game in action. She couldn’t wait to get back to camp and incorporate more of her ideas into the game. By the end of the camp, she asked to have two computer monitors so she could start coding like the pros do.
Another parent shared that his daughter had attended numerous athletic camps during the summer and this one was her favorite by far. We heard many more stories about girls inspired to pursue a career they didn’t know they had a passion for, or didn’t even know was an option. Rachel Ramsay, the creator of Girls Go Digital, shared that getting girls interested in STEM at a young age is key, and that in supporting this cause Vivint Smart Home was willing to put its money where its mouth is. We loved seeing so many seeds planted from this camp and were proud to help push the goals of Rachel’s group forward.
…and employees.
We were initially concerned because the camp was scheduled to take place in an area neighboring our employees’ workspace. Given that we had two camp sessions stretched across two weeks, it had the potential to be highly disruptive.
To our delight, our concerns were entirely misplaced. We didn’t receive a single complaint, and our Slack channels were abuzz with employees gushing about the experience. They didn’t mind the Ozobots running around the second floor or the noise from the soldering nearby. In fact, members of our hardware team mentioned how jealous they were as they didn’t have the opportunity to solder until college. Several employees led classes and activities alongside Girls Go Digital instructors, and afterwards, other employees asked how they could be involved next year. It was clear the camp brought an infectious energy to our office.
This event proved to be one of the most rewarding experiences of our year so far. We anticipate it will become a beloved annual tradition for us.
