Past Workshops
February 29, 2024: Leap Day! (for girls)
We had a Leap Day theme for February 29th! We learned how to mathematically determine if a year is a Leap Year, and then used Scratch to code up some froggy leaps. We also started the day with a leap theme, making origami frogs that raced each other for dessert. Fun coding times for girls AND frogs!
Fall 2023 Workshop (girls)
October 28, 2023: Spooky Apps (for girls)
We learned how to build apps using MIT's App Inventor, and used it to create a surprising spooky transition -- and also to tell some HI-larious Halloween jokes! (For example... what is a skeleton's favorite instrument? Give up? It's a tromBONE!)
Fall 2023 Workshop (girls)
October 29, 2023: Python & Probabilitly Distributions
We learned how to make decisions using a Monte Carlo probability distribution, all implemented in Python. The consensus was that we should probably NOT start our own funk/jazz/house/rock band, however most of us at WCoC still think we should do it.
Fall 2023 Workshop (women)
April 9, 2023: Image Processing & Filters (for girls)
We learned how images our stored on our phones and apps, and developed our own versions of instagram filters at this workshop!
Spring 2023 Workshop (girls)
April 2, 2023: Data Viz & Athletes' Stories (for women)
We learned some data visualization techniques at this workshop, to tell the stories of women's accomplishments across the country, including of course non-binary and transgender athletes we admire too. We focused on women's record-setting achievements in sport, and took time to acknowledge the systemic barriers that had delayed some of those achievements. By the end, we each had created an interactive JavaScript-based map telling visual stories that were meaningful to us.
Spring 2023 Workshop
October 22, 2022: Haunted Houses in Cyberspace! (for girls)
Halloween, the best holiday EVER, is all about spookiness and secrets. (Who is under that mask? You never know!) And that’s the theme of this workshop too. It’s a fun, hands-on programming morning with ghostly surprises and batty friends.
Girls ages 10-14 joined us for a fun day of creating haunted-house websites where all kinds of spooky things could jump out at you!
Haunted House Website!
October 23, 2022: Data Science and the Vote! (for women)
At this workshop we dove into some programming that's both practical and the most fun -- data science! We broke down and analyzed data about the first women who registered to vote in 1920, right after the 19th amendment passed. Our brand-new and powerful Python skills were on display.
Participants and Volunteers at the Women's Workshop, October 2022!
March 20, 2021: Data Visualization in the Spring
In 2021, there are more web pages, images, Tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram stories, and public- and private-sector data than ever before. But data is meaningless until we transform into something accessible and understandable -- that’s where data visualization comes in. In this workshop, we used Python to create real-world visualizations of data, and had some fun along the way, too!
Code-Celebrating the Start of Spring!
February 25, 2021: Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler!
When the winter is cold and dreary, nothing lifts us up like a PARADE! (A parade of CODE, of course!) At this hands-on workshop as we learn how to code up a fun, custom Mardi Gras parade float from scratch using ProcessingJS. We closed out the workshop with a parade of floats through all our screens. Happy Mardi Gras!
Parades and King Cake and Party Hats!
November 7, 2020: Intro to Web Dev (Women)
We started this workshop with a fun, informative talk by Holly Griffith, a super cool NASA engineer. Then, in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, we built our own voting web sites that were a lot more silly and a lot less stressful. Everything we did, we built from scratch using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Vote for your favorite fictional dojo!
October 27, 2020: Spooky Coding Workshop! (Girls)
When Laney is coding in late October, a Halloween theme is just inevitable! At our first-ever virtual coding workshop, we made a trick-or-treat neighborhood. We used PyGame to build doors, decorate them, and then send out a "trick" or a "treat" to everyone who knocked.
Trick-or-Treat door!
Week of April 6, 2020. At-Home Challenge Week #4
This week's at-home challenge: Encryption! We talked about some ways that words, numbers, and sentences are stored in computers after being transformed (encrypted) into secret messages. We wrote our own version of the Caesar Cipher (named after Julius) and left a secret mystery message for everyone to decrypt! Did you get the answer?
Week of March 30, 2020. At-Home Challenge Week #3
This week's at-home challenge: Use your awesome computer science skills and mix in some data science techniques to argue in favor of Equal Pay. We created some data visualizations in Python to support the US National Women's Soccer Team, who are fighting for equal pay in court right now. Go team!
Week of March 23, 2020. At-Home Challenge Week #2
This week's at-home challenge: Code up a web page that teaches the world something! We've been so inspired to see all the sites popping up recently, teaching us how to dance, cook, build stuff, etc., that we encourage you to teach the world something awesome you know!
Week of March 16, 2020. At-Home Challenge Week #1
While everyone is schooling- and working-from-home, we sent out a little remote challenge that everyone can do at home. This first week we re-created our own version of the game Cookie Clicker. Check out the great work everyone did from their own living rooms!
February 22, 2020. Coding in a Visual Context (women).
This workshop was all about coding in a visual context. We learned how drawing and animation work in computer science, and then created some fun animations of our own! We programmed in Java -- so everyone came away from the workshop with a solid short intro to to one of the most popuar programming languages out there.
Java programming is the best!
February 8, 2020: Selfies and SnapChat (Girls)
Guest Speaker: Riya Chandra, Girls Who Code Northeastern
Our community: Girls Who Code
This computer science workshop had a selfie theme! We started by learning about image compression and creating our own image pixel-by-pixel out of post-it notes. We also learned how to build image filters of our own, just like Instagram and SnapChat do. Check out some of the awesome filtering we did in the slides below!
Image Compression!
March 30, 2019: Digital Music (Girls)
Guest Speaker: Elizabeth Kazakoff, City of Boston
Our Community: Marsha Rhea Williams, the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in computer science.
This hands-on computer science workshop had a music theme! We learned about the role of programming in making music, and built our own dance parties using a totally unofficial, unlicensed Scratch extension for Spotify.
Digital Music and Dancing!
March 16, 2019: Data Visualization (Women)
This hands-on computer science workshop was all about working with data. In 2019, there are more web pages, images, Tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram stories, and public- and private-sector data than ever before. But data is meaningless until we transform into something accessible and understandable -- that’s where data visualization comes in. In this workshop, we used JavaScript to create animated visualizations of earthquakes in the U.S.
Data Viz with JavaScript!
November 3, 2018: Machine Learning (Women)
Teachers: Prof. Laney Strange, Prof. Nate DerbinskyPython is a powerful programming language we can use to process and understand large amounts of data. In this workshop, we’ll learn how to use code to teach computers how to think… at least a little. This was a fun, interactive learning experience that included an introduction to machine learning, important applications, and some hands-on coding with Python.
October 28, 2018: Halloween-Theme Workshop! (Girls)
Teachers: Prof. Laney StrangeGuest speaker: Amy Lashley
On this Halloween weekend, we had fun writing some spooky code! We used the Alice programming language to learn about object-oriented programming — and to program a cool, 3D animated ghost story!
Halloween Programming!
October 20, 2018: Brownie "Computer Expert" Workshop
We hosted a special workshop just for the Arlington Brownie troops. They earned their computer expert badges!
Brownie Computer Experts
March 24, 2018: Analysis Techniques with Python (Women)
Teachers: Prof. Ben Hescott, Prof. Laney StrangeAt this workshop, we had a great time applying Python programming tools to analyzing a publicly-available dataset.
November 4, 2017: Tufts Girls of Code...for Women!
Teachers: Prof. Laney Strange, Prof. Ben HescottWe partnered with our friends at Tufts University to bring you our first women's event -- Women’s Community of Code. At our debut workshop, we learned how to make a web site slick and interactive with the building blocks of the web: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Laney and co. at Women's Community of Code, November 2017
