 Hello everyone. Thanks for joining in today. We are at CISA headquarters in San Francisco And we are talking about girls who code so we have some awesome ladies who code here at CISA and do other jobs as well We're really excited to spend time with you here today. So let's I'm Angela I should tell you about myself I lead the community team here at CISA and what does that mean that means that I work with teachers all Over the world that you see saw and make sure that they have ideas They know of other teachers that they can connect with and learn from and your teacher may also Participate in some of the programs that I lead So I was a kindergarten teacher for 15 years before coming to work at CISA My students use CISA every single day in kindergarten and loved it And I saw how how great it was for my students and families and wanted to help other people get started, too So let's talk about what we are going to do today. We're gonna learn a little bit about grace hopper We're also going to meet other women who work at CISA We are going to talk about Experiences that we've had as women who code and then at the very end We are gonna take time to answer your questions So be thinking about what you might want to know about as we keep going today in our webinar so The first thing I want you to know is that computer science education week the week that we're celebrating today is Really held in recognition of grace hopper's birthday, which is so cool And who is grace hopper? So grace hopper was a computer scientist and she her birthday is actually on December 9th, which is coming up if she was still alive. She'd be 112 years old and She was a US Navy rear admiral and worked on some of the earliest computers ever made She did some amazing amazing work and this story I love to tell so when she was seven years old So maybe the same age as some of you are watching today She was very curious and she was so curious that she thought How does this alarm clock work? So she took her alarm clock and she took it apart and she wanted to figure out well How does this work and then she took apart one and then she thought hmm? I'm still curious So then she took about another one and another one and another one I think she to the story goes that she took apart like seven different alarm clocks and her mom was a bit surprised But could easily tell that grace was very very curious So I think one of the things to keep in mind is if you are interested in coding or even working in a company With people that code if you're curious and really like to solve problems It might be a good step for you our good career to look into So we're gonna meet some more of the seesaw team here today. So I'm sitting next to Pam Yeah, hi everyone. My name is Pam and I'm a software engineering manager So what does that mean? So usually on my day-to-day? I come into work and I my job is to help other engineers build seesaw And you can think about this kind of like a principal who's working with all of the teachers and supports all of the teachers in a school Yeah, so you work with a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah, I do work with a lot of people Can you tell us about what this is? Yes So right there you see me with a group of other people Participating in a hackathon. So what is the hackathon a hackathon is a fun? event where people gather and form groups with a lot of other random strangers and it's kind of like a computer science party you get Together and over a day or two you work to build a creative idea And that sounds really exciting. Yeah, and then this picture tells what's happening here. Yes So this is a picture of a coding boot camp that I participated in a few years ago So I was teaching high school girls how to code and you can see here it's like the group of all of these students and We took a you know over the course of like two weeks all of these girls came in And learned how to code not knowing much beforehand. So it was kind of like a fun two-week summer camp So you definitely don't have to be a boy to code. No That's what we're talking about today So we have another friend that's here at CISA headquarters. Do you want to say hello? Yeah? Hi everyone? I'm a Lana. I'm a software engineer at CISA I work on the Android app and also the back end The Android app is some of the things that you can see and the back end is some of the logic behind the operation that you Can't see And my day-to-day I do a lot of coding sitting at a computer and coding, but I also There's some code right there. Thank you, Angela I also work with a lot of different people in the company like designers I work with Pam who's my manager And people on sales for example to see what we should build And then when we decide what we should build we write code and code is like any other language So like we have English we have Spanish we have different languages and code So I think this code right here is Python So I use Python sometimes and sometimes I use Java also So to me this looks like all sorts of just numbers and letters and stuff that actually does something, Elana Surprisingly, yes, Angela. It actually does a lot of things. I'm I think just on the screen alone We're doing like four or five different functions Wow, that's cool. All right, and then we get to meet Claire. Hi Claire. Hi everyone I'm Claire and I'm CISA's implementation specialist Which is a fancy way of saying that I help your schools and districts get CISA set up for all the teachers and students in the school whenever principal or Administrator has a question they email me and I help solve their problem and make sure that CISA is up and running in your schools every day Yeah, so hopefully everyone listening has figured out that there's a lot of teamwork that happens here, right? So there's a lot of people that work together to make sure everything goes well So we're going to talk a little bit about what subjects are most important in school If you want to be a good coder and I'm going to let Pam start first. Yeah Yeah So one thing I want to iterate is that all of you are probably already taking classes that are going to help You be a good coder Being a good coder requires a lot of problem solving and working together and working with a lot of different people Yeah, what would you say Alana? What subjects are important? Yeah, I would agree I think the biggest thing to piggyback off of Pam is the ability to problem solve and to critical think and I think you Can get that in a lot of different subjects and there's tons of different types of computer science So there's some that some that's more math heavy and science heavy and some that's maybe more design based And so maybe something like art would be useful So I think in almost any subject a lot of the skills that you learn you can also apply to some sort of computers Thanks for sharing So then another question we're going to talk about is what did you do in school that helped you with your job today? So I will start so when I was in elementary school I was in some different clubs and activities that really helped me Follow some interests that I had so I was a Girl Scout So that was really exciting because we did all sorts of you know projects and work together And we helped the community. I also like doing a lot of art So that that kind of helps me in my job today thinking about what people need and how to design things that they would find useful What about you Pam? Yeah, yeah, so for me I also was an art club and I did a lot of different extracurriculars as well I think leadership roles also helped me a lot especially in my current job So I helped lead a volunteer group in high school in middle school and also Had like leadership roles in like robotics club. Cool. What about you Claire? Yeah, in school. I took a lot of art classes. I was actually an art teacher for a number of years after leaving school And I think that being able to work with others and find creative solutions to problems has really helped with my job because I have to figure out how to Make things work in hundreds of different ways every day for each school that I work with and I Never took any computer science classes in school, but here we are So even if you don't have a computer science background, you can still work in tech and work with amazing coders That's right. Alana. What would you say about this? What helped you? I think things that helped me the most Actually were a lot of side projects. So In my free time the cool thing about coding is if you can get access to a laptop or something like that That's kind of all you need to build something. So I remember growing up and just having lots of different ideas I I built an app once to try to get people find people play board games with me. I really like games Found one person my friend who I forced to also download the app But things like that. So like these side projects just had an idea and tried to implement it and you really learn as you go Lots of curiosity. I'm hearing there, too So now we get to go to I think one of my favorite parts of doing the webinars is we get to hear from Students like you that are listening and have questions that you want us to answer because we've talked a lot a lot of things But be thinking about what you want to ask and I want to give a couple shout outs We've got so many people here like mr. Atkinson's class and mr. McKinney's class mr. Galen's class We have miss keeper miss thorn borough's class all sorts of classes here So we won't have time to answer everybody's question, but we'll try to get through as many as we can So I'm going to play a little bit of music for maybe 30 seconds And you are going to get to look at your teacher and talk to your teacher and think of maybe one question That you would like your teacher to type in Make sure that your teacher lets us know where you're from and what grade level you are in So we can answer your questions and we'll try to get through as many as we can hear live today So let's listen to a little bit of music. Here we go. So many questions coming in. Oh my goodness This is exciting. So we're gonna start with miss Ashcraft's class and they are fifth graders in Ohio and they've got all sorts of questions, but I think the one that we are going to Start with is do you ever have trouble collaborating? Meaning working together with other people? What do you think Pam? Do you want to take that question? Sure? Let's see. So one of the things that happens when you work a lot of people is that sometimes there's communication Issues that might pop up And you know, I think this is something that happens, you know Always no matter what but like one of the things that we do to make sure that We collaborate and we communicate properly is that we have like kind of like daily check-in So we talk to each other every day to make sure that we agree on goals and once you have that agreement on goals It's a lot easier to make sure that you're moving and doing all of you right thing. That makes sense That makes sense. We've got so many questions. I know that miss Mel chose classes here miss Hewitt's class miss Emery's class So thanks for joining us. We have a question from fourth graders in miss hearts class What is the most interesting thing to do with code? Alana? What would you say? Oh? man, so many options I Think something for me. That's the most interesting is When we we launch some code and it hits people across the world. So see saw we have When we launch code like let's say our website. We have people in Australia using it We have people over in Europe using it South America. I think we're in over 90 countries So I think one of the coolest the most interesting things to do with good is once you make something It's very easy to share and spread with a lot of people That's great. We have miss Olson's class. They are fourth graders in Iowa So hello to everyone their question is how long do you work every day? So I can start with that. I would say at least eight hours a day sometimes more My hours are a little bit different sometimes because I want to really support teachers that are at school teaching when a lot Of people are at their job. So I do some work at night and early early in the morning, too. What about you Claire? It depends on the time of year most Most of the time I work Usually nine or so hours a day But during the back-to-school season, which is August September and October I usually work closer to 15 16 hours a day Because so many schools need to use seesaw and we want to make sure that we can get it to All of you students as quickly as possible. So it kind of fluctuates there. Yeah We have a question for Miss Cross's class is coding easy What would you say Pam? I would say it's fine. Okay Easy is a relative word, you know some things once you start doing more and more it becomes easier and easier But the better you get at something I think the more interesting challenges that you can take and I think the main Goal of coding is that as you get good at something you like you find new challenges and then it gets hard again I think it's that easy to hard that makes it really fun And this will be a question for you Alana for Miss Fryer's class in Oklahoma. Hi everyone What is something that you have coded that you are most proud of Alana? Oh my gosh, but I'm most proud of Okay, that's a tough one, but in college I I was a part of a group that coded a website and what it did was We worked with Recycling and garbage collectors in Baltimore Shadowed Baltimore and what the the goal was was to reduce people's waste And so what we did is we would weigh people's trash And we'd weigh the recycling and then it would show up on this website And they could compare themselves to their neighbors and so we tried to gamify People recycling and so we would give little prizes to the people who recycled the most and threw away the least Wow, that's great. I would be proud of that, too We have Miss Castro's class. They're in Chicago. They're second and third graders Our their question is do you code every day? So I do not code every day. What about you Pam? Not every day, but almost every day Claire. What about you? Not nope not me Alana how about you I I do code every day sometimes I even dream in code, you know, I code so much fun So we have a question from Miss Wilner who is actually in Argentina. How long does coding take? How long does coding take I think Coding is kind of like You know, it's kind of like writing a book I guess There's multiple chapters I would say and so I think the easiest thing that I do is I kind of break up the whole book into chapters and then maybe chapters into a page and It's easier for me to think about it kind of in like these smaller goals and milestones And so I would say we try to think about things like Pam and I work on a team And we work on things on a weekly basis. So every week we have a check-in And I think that's a good amount of time to get something solid done Awesome, so this is an interesting question Miss Myers is asking They're third graders in Pennsylvania if they like to code are there any gifts that they could ask for Pam Do you have any ideas? Wow, let's see any things that any gift that you can ask for I would say like access to a Device that lets you write code. It's probably something that would be good like access to a computer somewhere So they can start playing around. There's a lot of websites out there You know that you can where you can start learning how to code and start building things I'm like you really only need a computer and access to a computer. I would say to start coding Thank you. So then we have Miss Mel chose class in Wisconsin their third through fifth grade girls right now watching and they have a coding curriculum at their school But they want to know What struggles have you had in your job with with coding? Alana do you want to start with struggles? Have you had? sure What struggles have I had I think? One thing is this is the first job that I've had outside of college This is my first full-time job and one struggle that I had is when I joined think a lot of people were more Experienced with the C-style code than I was And so the beginning I spent a lot of time learning before that I could contribute And everyone is very supportive But I think a struggle was realizing that I couldn't contribute right away And I first had to take some time and learn about what seesaw is all about before I could Great we have another question from Miss Irving and Miss Berry's class in Florida They want to know how many female engineers are there and how many male engineers are there at seesaw Do we know yeah? Yeah, so we have a seven female women engineers Okay, and I think we have nine. Is that right Alana? Yeah, nine nine nine engineers who identify as male great. Thanks for sharing that And mr. McKinney's class boy We love seeing your class icons that you're showing us in Sharing which we'll talk about in a minute, but they want to know how did you discover that coding would that coding would be a good career? We'll do that. Yeah, I mean I think for me when I was in school like I loved building things I loved being creative and like playing with Legos and I think I saw I like math and science and art So I feel like all of the elements that are really essential to coding were there and were interesting to me When I was in I didn't get to take any computer science classes until college, right? So that when I got to college and I started to think of your science I found it really really fun and I like those classes a lot more than others And I think that's what really made me realize that that was what I wanted to do for a career Cool cool. Well, we I know we're out of time, but we could just go on forever We have so many questions, but shout out to Miss Bellinger's class. Mr. O'Donnell's class Miss Samson's class Miss Cross's class I think we said hello so many classes that are here and I know we can't shout out to everyone But we are so glad that you could join us But one thing I want to let you know about is you can code and create too and this is a creation activity Inside seesaw that your teacher could share with you to design the next seesaw class icon So all the directions are here and we're actually going to pick three winners that share their designs with us and our Designers going to build it into seesaw. So we we've already gotten lots of great designs coming in But make sure you take a take a shot at that We'd like to see what your ideas are and we want to thank you for joining us today for computer science Education week and we're excited that you can you know, maybe do try some coding and and share what you're doing with us this week But thanks everyone for coming. Bye