Nola Minogue ‘21
December 26, 2019
Since September, eleven students have met weekly on Wednesdays at Beverly Public Library as part of the “Girls Who Code” program. Girls Who Code sessions have been devoted to teaching girls in grades 6 through 12, run by Young Adult Librarian Meghan Karasin and Christy King, who has a background in streaming services. Of the eleven teens, the majority are Beverly Middle School students. “The program is built around giving girls a place where they can feel comfortable exploring and learning about coding,” said Karasin. “We’ve taken a bit of a hands-off approach to the curriculum and the teens are leading the way in choosing what they want to do.”
Scratch, an MIT programming language and site, has been used for the teens to create online projects using a block-like interface. This term, the students chose to work on individual projects to be presented to friends and family at the conclusion of the program, which occurred on December 12th. Most of the projects started with the same basic format and then build up from there, adding different features to make the games more complex or further develop the design of the background and characters.
Karasin continued, “They work together, and with us, to troubleshoot problems, work through bugs in their codes and get ideas on what they want to see in their projects. There’s a lot of self-directed learning, a lot of trial and error, and a need for persistence.” The program will start up again in February 2020.
