Aptos Middle School at Expanse

 

Tuesday October 8, 2019 | Aptos Middle School at Expanse| by Caitlin Morris, IGNITE Advisor

A group of 17 seventh-grade girls had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a coding workshop hosted by Expanse, a cybersecurity company located in downtown San Francisco. Upon arrival, the girls were ecstatic to find welcome gift bags and tasty snacks at their work stations. During the workshop, the girls learned the basics of coding which included changing the background colors of some of their favorite websites, and a treasure hunt activity that involved practicing the skills they had just learned. The girls quickly got the hang of it and were sad when it was time to end.

 

We followed the workshop with a delicious lunch in the Expanse dining commons and then had the opportunity to listen to an amazing panel of female Expanse employees. Many girls asked questions about how and where they can learn more! The girls were inspired to follow their dreams in becoming engineers, medical technologists, network engineers, and many more STEM careers, after attending the field trip today. 

 

 

Many thanks to Haley Sayres the great team at Expanse for making this trip such a success! 

 

 

After attending this event:

59%

of girls want to study harder to attend college and further their education

Here's what the students enjoyed most:

What inspired me was learning how to edit websites to our liking. - 7th grade

 

I loved learning some hacking skills!  - 7th grade

 

I enjoyed changing the websites to make it our own!  - 7th grade

 

My favorite part was the treasure hunt because it made coding fun!  - 7th grade

 

I enjoyed learning about domains and IP addresses as well as Caesar’s code.  - 7th grade