Swinburne inspires the next generation of female coders

Swinburne has teamed up with Code Like a Girl to educate and encourage the next generation of female coders.

Code Like a Girl is Melbourne-born social enterprise driving change in the tech community; inspiring new generations of girls to acquire coding as a skill through workshops and events.

Throughout January Swinburne hosted school holiday code camps designed to promote the teaching of coding, digital literacy, computational thinking and problem solving to young girls.

In a recent publication from Deloitte, it is estimated that by 2020 there will be a need for over 700,000 skilled Information and Communication Technology (ICT) workers in Australia.

Despite the importance of ICT based skills, female uptake of ICT based degrees accounts for only 24 per cent of total enrolments.

Code Like a Girl are dedicated to debugging the gender gap in the technology industry.

Code Like a Girl Education Lead, Anna Hayes, says there is no better time than now to disrupt the male dominated industry.

“More than ever, 2018 is the time to empower females with digital literacy and coding skills,” she says.

“Code Like a Girl highlights female role models to encourage more girls to stay in the industry and step into leadership roles.

“We believe that by providing girls with inspirational female role models they can address some of the barriers to women’s participation in STEM and entrepreneurship.”

In 2017, Federal and State Governments introduced digital literacy and coding into primary school learning outcomes.

Manager of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at Swinburne, Andrew Roadknight, believes coding is an essential aspect of primary learning.

It’s vitally important for these skills to be practiced and learnt at an early age.” - Andrew Roadknight, Manager of ICT at Swinburne

“Coding for primary School students, and in general, allows a person to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills,” says Mr Roadknight.

“It’s vitally important for these skills to be practiced and learnt at an early age.”

The increased focus on digital literacy within the primary school curriculum will have a last effect on the next generation of students and professionals.

“Coding is going to become more recognised as a skill in the future and can help prepare students for a number of potential careers that may not already exist,” explains Mr Roadknight.

“As technology becomes more and more a part of everyday life, so does the ability code.”

To learn more about Code Like a Girl, and attend future workshops, visit the Code Like a Girl events webpage.

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