XX Coders Club In Half Hollow Hills Teaches Coding To Young Women

For two weeks in July the Half Hollow Hills High School East XX Coders Club held a coding summer camp in Wyandanch that introduced computer science to a group of 22 young women. The “campers” learned how to code in Scratch, JavaScript, Java and Python, and were taught ways that computer science can be applied in their daily lives and how programming can change the world.

Guest speakers from Long Island Women in Tech and Girls, Inc. visited and addressed the campers, offering them insight to the female perspective and experience in the technology industry. The camp ended with a field trip to visit the Google headquarters in New York City, where a panel of Google employees answered questions from the group and showed them a day in the life of a coder.

“Women are underrepresented in the field of computer engineering, and we founded this club to help make high school girls feel more prepared to take college level computer science courses and to battle the misconception that coding is a boy’s job,” said Hills East senior Aditi Patil, President and Founder of XX Coders. “We hope experiences like this summer camp help empower young women to continue to grow their love for computer science and to become future creators of technology.”

XX Coders is an after school club for girls at Half Hollow Hills High School East. The girls in the club work on fun activities through Google CS First and Code Academy in order to learn Scratch, HTML, CSS, and a multitude of other computer languages. In addition to offering a summer camp, the club also partners with the district’s Special Education Parent Teacher Association to work one-on-one with children on the autism spectrum to teach them about computer science.

“This camp was offered at no cost to the participants due to the generosity of many donors and a grant from the National Center for Women & Information Technology,” said Amanda Kavner, advisor for the club and a Chemistry/Biology Teacher at Hills East. “I’m so proud of our club and their work to teach female students how to code, helping to bridge the gender gap in this male dominated field.”

Because of the success of this year’s camp, the club plans to offer more events like this in the future.

An education-oriented community with high academic expectations, the Half Hollow Hills Central School District is located in a residential area of 50,000 people in the central part of Long Island, approximately 40 miles from New York City. Providing for the education of approximately 8,400 students, the school district has five elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. Half Hollow Hills High Schools are fully accredited by the New York State Department of Education and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. The District is committed to providing students opportunities to excel in academics, athletics, and the arts.

XX Coders was founded to encourage young women to learn about the wonders of the computer science field. Supporting girls’ interest in computer science will change the way many of them look at their careers and future goals, helping to close the shocking gender gap in this field. XX Coders has expanded its mission to bring computer science education to socioeconomically disadvantaged students and students with special needs. Computer science is a booming industry in modern society and in order for technology to advance, everyone needs to be part of this progress, and this is XX Coders’ ultimate goal.