On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 the Hackergal Coding Club at Richland Academy participated in their first annual HACKERGAL HACKATHON! Hackergal is a charitable organization that inspires girls across Canada to explore the opportunities in code. With women vastly underrepresented in the tech industry, Hackergal strives to inspire a new wave of Canadian female coders to bring equality to the booming industry.
WHAT IS A HACKERGAL HACKATHON?
A Hackathon is an exciting event, typically lasting several hours, that brings computer programmers together to participate in collaborative challenge. The Hackergal Hackathon captures this concept, inviting middle school girls across Canada to work in teams to code as part of a nationwide movement!
LEADERS IN HERSTORY
The theme for this years Hackathon is LEADERS IN HERSTORY
”We want to challenge the girls to think about how they can use their coding skills to highlight a person in their lives, their communities and/or in the world around us! Examples of stories could focus on creating a story, a game, a quiz, or a news report related to leadership. Remember the goal is to offer an open-ended challenge where the girls are being creative and collaborative with their teammates.”
Words are not enough to express how resilient and committed these girls were to learning code. For the past 5 weeks they devoted their lunch recess to come into the learning commons and learn how to use the coding program ‘Lynx’. Their hard work paid off because they not only learned how to code and created some spectacular projects about what leadership is to them, but they also demonstrated communication skills, critical thinking, problem solving and leadership skills that they will use in their everyday lives and future opportunities.
The highlight of the Hackathon was they were able to participate in a nation wide call with all the schools who were also participating in the Hackathon. Through technology they were able to connect with Hackgals across the country from British Colombia, Newfoundland and Alberta. AMAZING!
