Guest post from Steve Morse, Technovation[MN] Board Member
Thanks to the sponsorship and support of PeopleNet, CoderDojoTC and the TIES Training Center in Falcon Heights, Technovation[MN] was able to have an “App Day” this past Saturday, November 1, 2014.
What an incredibly fun way to spend a Saturday morning! Nineteen young girls and 22 potential mentors, in addition to numerous volunteers, chewed up 3 hours learning to make their own Android app using an easy-to-use and free program called App Inventor. Our goal at Technovation[MN] is to build the confidence of these young girls while inspiring them to potential futures in technology by teaching them about coding. We plan to help groups of young girls develop their own unique apps to showcase in the global Technovation Challenge and win an opportunity to present to real venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and earn $10,000 to commercialize their app.
A lot of parents today are growing up with tech-savvy children that seem to take to technology out of the womb. I love the fact that there’s a group of people out here taking advantage of that by showing young girls that it’s not only cool, but it can be a lot of fun to be able to create with technology. The joy and the pride of learning how to create a simple app, like we did, might just inspire a few next generation female technologists and entrepreneurs. It was nice to see a group of young friends discovering, learning and having fun together.
I remember the time back when I was in third grade and my elementary school got its first computer. We marveled at it. Thankfully, I was one of the math geeks in the school that got to learn about bits and bytes and how to handle floppy disks. I still remember those days with a smile and through Technovation[MN], we plan to make that same thing happen for these young technologists.
It was also clear that the kids probably picked it up and were better than most of us adults. But that’s what is so great; you do not have to be a computer whiz to be a mentor. Anyone interested in mentoring can help. Learning what you need to do is easy, just listen to the kids!!
The next “App Day” is on January 11th. Teams of young girls can learn how to code and be mentored over the next few months and compete with their app at “Appapalooza” this April.
Donate to this fabulous cause.
Become a mentor.
Start a team.
Technovation[MN] is an initiative of Code Savvy, a nonprofit catalyst dedicated to inspiring a diverse new code-savvy generation.
Stephen Morse
Technovation[MN] Board Member
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