Girls Who Code

WHO WE ARE

Girls Who Code is a new organization working to educate, inspire and equip 13- to 17-year-old girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering.

WHAT WE DO

Together with leading educators, engineers, and entrepreneurs, Girls Who Code has developed a new model for computer science education, pairing intensive instruction in robotics, web design, and mobile development with high-touch mentorship led by the industry’s top female developers and entrepreneurs.

WHY WE DO IT

Today, just 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, and less than 10% of venture capital-backed companies have female founders. Yet females use the internet 17% more than their male counterparts and represent the fastest growing demographic online and on mobile, creating more than two-thirds of content on social networking sites. Technology companies with more women on their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment, and companies with women on technical teams increases teams’ problem-solving ability and creativity.

The numbers speak for themselves. By 2018, there will be 1.4 million computer science-related job openings, yet U.S. universities are expected to produce enough computer science graduates to fill just 29% of these jobs. And while 57% of bachelor’s degrees are obtained by women, less than 14% of computer science degrees are awarded to women.

Girls Who Code – About.

UCD K-14 Outreach Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education

The UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education (C-STEM) aims to improve computing, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (C-STEM) education in both formal and informal programs in K-14. The goal of the C-STEM Center is to provide computing education for all K-12 students and develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills through integrated computing and STEM education. The C-STEM Center studies how to use computing and robotics technology to increase student interest and help them learn STEM subjects with an emphasis on Algebra, the gatekeeper for STEM disciplines. The C-STEM Center also studies how to streamline the curriculum on computing education in the context of STEM subjects in elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as the first two years of college. Through various outreach activities, the C-STEM Center seeks to inspire students to pursue computing and STEM related careers and post-secondary study.

via UCD K-14 Outreach Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education.

Black Girls Code   imagine. build. create.

BlackGirlsCode is devoted to showing the world that black girls can code, and do so much more. By reaching out to the community through workshops and after school programs, BlackGirlsCode introduces computer coding lessons to young girls from underrepresented communities in programming languages such as Scratch or Ruby on Rails. BlackGirlsCode has set out to prove to the world that girls of every color have the skills to become the programmers of tomorrow. By promoting classes and programs we hope to grow the number of women of color working in technology and give underprivileged girls a chance to become the masters of their technological worlds.

BlackGirlsCode is proud to say we’ve completed our first year as an organization, during which time we had the honor of bringing technology and entertainment to many wonderful young girls of color. By teaching the girls programming and game design, we hope to have started the lifelong process of developing in them a true love for technology and the self-confidence that comes from understanding the greatest tools of the 21st century.

via What We Do – Black Girls Code   imagine. build. create..

Scientists Uncover Invisible Motion in Video – NYTimes.com

A 30-second video of a newborn baby shows the infant silently snoozing in its crib, his breathing barely perceptible. But when the video is run through an algorithm that can amplify both movement and color, the baby’s face blinks crimson with each tiny heartbeat.

The amplification process is called Eulerian Video Magnification, and is the brainchild of a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The team originally developed the program to monitor neonatal babies without making physical contact. But they quickly learned that the algorithm can be applied to other videos to reveal changes imperceptible to the naked eye. Prof. William T. Freeman, a leader on the team, imagines its use in search and rescue, so that rescuers could tell from a distance if someone trapped on a ledge, say, is still breathing.

via Scientists Uncover Invisible Motion in Video – NYTimes.com.

RGBDToolkit – DSLR + DEPTH Filmmaking

The RGBDToolkit invites you to imagine the future of filmmaking.

Repurposing the depth sensing camera from the Microsoft Kinect or Asus Xtion Pro as an accessory to your HD DSLR camera, the open source hardware and software captures and visualizes the world as mesmerizing wireframe forms. A CGI and video hybrid, the data can be rephotographed from any angle in post.

via RGBDToolkit – DSLR + DEPTH Filmmaking | Home.

Cinder

CINDER PROVIDES A POWERFUL, INTUITIVE TOOLBOX for programming graphics, audio, video, networking, image processing and computational geometry. Cinder is cross-platform, and in general the exact same code works under Mac OS X, Windows and a growing list of other platforms — most recently the iPhone and iPad.

Cinder is designed to take advantage of platforms’ native capabilities whenever it’s possible, and relies on a minimum of 3rd party libraries. This makes for much lighter, faster applications, and means Cinder apps get free performance, security and capability upgrades whenever the operating system does.

via About | Cinder.