Black Girls Code SmartyFellas and SmartyGirls Interview: Bacon, Curtz, Williams, and Evearitt from Renee Marchol on Vimeo.

Robotics Event Transcript

My name is Joe Bacon. I’m at the Black Girls Code at UC Berkeley. It is Saturday, December 13, 2014.

I’m Joyce Curtz and I’m here at the Black Girls Code event. This event is working with Lego. Every child, even adults, still play today with Lego. So I think it’s a very good kind of toy if you want to make girls familiar with the technical aspect of Lego. And by doing that they get more familiar with the tech industry.

By using Lego, having that as an introduction to technology and the technical industry, kids can get familiar by just playing with the toy. Playing with Lego, building something, creating something, and having something created at the end by putting little pieces together. Then the technical aspect of it can be programming something on the computer and then putting that together with the toy itself. Then the toy can do things. It can make noises, it can work, or it can move. Children like that.

They like creating that does something. They can say, “I did that! I did that!” In that way they play. What you’re doing is you getting them introduced to the technical industry because this is all part of the tech of today.

My name is Matt Evearitt and I’m the Director of Technology at Mercy High School in San Francisco. It’s an all-girls high school and what were trying to do is start off with a small program with about nine girls to learn about technology and to learn about media production as well to create equity in the industry. And that’s one of our main goals. So our girls are going to start learning off with block coding with programs like Scratch, and then they’re going to learn about Media Production and Podcasting later on. And eventually we’ll be running our own independent Media Production Club through the school.

My name is Jennifer Williams. I’m here at Black Girls Code at the Robotics Event on the campus of UC Berkeley. I decided to volunteer at the event as I can lend a hand today. My daughter is seven years old and when we moved back to the Bay Area I was looking for an organization to get her involved in and it was mentioned about Black Girls Code. I never really thought about sending her or exposing her to technical experiences and now that I think back on my experiences when it comes to S.T.E.M. science and math. In 5th grade I attended an event in San Francisco called Broadening Your Horizon in Science and Math where I was exposed to the sciences, mathematics and things of that nature. So it’s really interesting to see that that gap still exists between young girls and young boys that we’re still trying to fill that S.T.E.M. gap. So I think that the organization of this event as a great segue way to get young ladies and parents thinking about other career opportunities or other points of interest. Here we are in 2014 and there’s still such a huge disparity in the field of science and mathematics so I’m so happy to be here. I believe she’s having a super awesome time. She’s smiling a lot. She’s nodding a lot. She doesn’t want me to interrupt her throughout the day so I’m trying not to be Mommy and just trying to be a super awesome volunteer.