How to Implement

• Have a table set up with a variety of craft materials. As girls come in you can hand out the design journals and tell them to decorate the back cover in a way that reflects who they are. (They should put their name on the journal as well.)
• Optional: The girls can continue to work on their design journals as you go through the next activities, or you can ask them to set their work aside until later.
• Introduce the SciGirls program to the girls: Give them a brief overview of the activities they will be doing over the next nine months. Show them some of the examples you have been working on, if you can.
• Watch:
  • SciGirls Computer Science Reel (4:50)
  • Inspire a Girl video (2:33)
  • Computer Science Intro video (0:50)
  • Computer Science is Changing Everything video (5:23)
• Discuss Computer Science and Computational Thinking. Ask the girls about their experiences with computers. Here are a few suggestions for getting the conversation started:
  • What are the different ways you interact with computers? How many of those ways involve being creative with computers?
  • What are ways that technology impacts our lives? (3D printing is being used to create limbs for amputees; microchips help us find lost pets; Skyping allows us to keep in touch with relatives who are far away.)
• Explain that learning computer science is more than learning to code in a computer language; it's about learning how computers and software are changing everything in our world. Computer science is the study and use of computers and something called computational thinking to solve problems. Explain that the girls will learn about and use computational thinking as they dive into the activities of this program.
• Why might it be important to learn more about how technology works regardless of what career you want? Examples: Farming (using data for watering and fertilizing), fashion (programmable LED dresses at New York Fashion Week 2015), medicine (using robots for surgery).
• Ask the girls to come up with a list of things that use code in everyday life, or a list of careers the require knowledge of coding or computers (digital animation in movies such as Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep, Star Wars or Hunger Games; recording music with GarageBand on your computer, or even mobile banking).
• Talk about Design Journals: Introduce the use of the design journals. If you have time, show the girls examples of design journals and discuss famous people that kept journals (Leonardo da Vinci Frida Kahlo, Marie Curie).
• Explain that you will prompt them at different times during the course to update their design journals, but encourage them to use their journals anytime they like to capture ideas, inspiration, notes, sketches, questions, frustrations, triumphs as they work on their design projects.
• Emphasize that design journals are a part of the process and that they shouldn’t expect what they put into them to be a final product. Rather, the journal is a place to record their process, to get the thinking out of their heads and onto paper, so that they can talk about it with others.
• If you have time, ask girls share their design journal decorations and explain why they chose to decorate it as they did.