Few things in life give me more joy than walking down the street, hand in hand with my daughter. One of them, which I experienced for the first time today, is walking down the street, hand in hand with my daughter, talking about building websites.
At Irene’s suggestion, I checked out Girls Learning Code Day and asked Mallory if she’d like to go with me. Mallory agreed to go without any hesitation. I had qualified the proposal with ‘but you’ll miss cross country ski training’ so I wasn’t sure whether this was about wanting to learn to make web pages or avoid wind sprints and ski bounding.
But by about hour two of this day-long workshop it became clear that this was about learning ‘code’.
She was focused and paid rapt attention to presenter Cassie Slack throughout the entire morning, as she drew her wireframe and started using Mozilla’s Thimble online code learning tool to create her own web page.
It helped too that we planned to have lunch at Nando’s newly opened Elgin St. location. Since discovering Dan and Phil she’s been dying to try the restaurant.
But the best part was listening to her rave about how exciting it was learning about how to make a web page and how much fun she was having. She was bouncing as we walked along.
See I don’t see that much enthusiasm around this stuff in the rest of my life.
And I feel really chuffed at being able to offer her something of what I know to help her do what she wants to do. It really feels like teaching as sharing.
And in the end she did in fact produce a web page. On the internet. With a URL and everything.
Incredibly cheap, very good teaching and such a chance for girls to gain knowledge and self-confidence, and for parents to learn along with them for the joy of it or to enhance their own skills.
I offer my most heartfelt thanks to the facilitators, mentors, sponsors and organizers.