Rockin’ around the Christmas tree, lit by young girl coders

Earlier this week, Electronic Products told you about a 3D-Printing Ornament Challenge hosted by the White House. Continuing along the path of encouraging STEM education among America's youth, Google is working with the White House in an effort to encourage girls to code by challenging them to light up trees in President's Park, where the White House is located. This marks the first occasion in which youth will have control over the tree lights in President’s Park.  

Google is hosting the initiative, part of its larger “Made With Code” program, which aims to get more young girls interested in computer science. The initiative marks one of many with a similar mission, as Electronic Products indicated in a recent article about the partnership between Code.org and Disney, who are using Frozen’s Anna and Elsa characters to get more young girls interested in computer programming. As addressed in that article, it is estimated that U.S. universities won’t be able to fill even a third of the country’s projected 1.4 million computing positions with qualified graduates by 2020. And estimates look even worse for women, who now make up more than half of the U.S. labor force. Less than 18% of computer science degrees are awarded to females, and only 20% of all U.S. software developers are women. And at this time, nine out of 10 schools in the U.S. do not offer computer science classes.

Beginning last week, Google challenged girls to use beginner programming language called Blockly to develop code to animate the lights decorating the Washington, DC park surrounding the White House. All participants have to do is visit the Made With Code website, where an online coding interface offers step-by-step instructions.

Some of the designs were unveiled during last Thursday’s annual White House tree-lighting ceremony, and others will continue to be on display throughout the remainder of the holiday season.

Google's vice-president of engineering, Pavni Diwanji, blogged about the project early last week, emphasizing how important it is for girls to learn more computer science.

“Even as coding becomes more important, less than 1% of high school girls say they’re interested in pursuing computer sciences in college,” she stated.

“That’s what Made with Code is about: discovering that creating something new and exciting — whether it’s a holiday tree, a video game or a driverless car — can be accomplished with the power of code,” Diwanji added.

Via Mashable