Apparently, this blog has not yet discussed the national non-profit organization Girls Who Code, though some posts have mentioned the issues it strives to address.
Girls Who Code established a summer immersion program in 2012 as part of an effort to extend information technology training opportunities to young women, who have traditionally been under-represented in the IT field. As the organization’s website previously announced, that immersion program is currently under way in the Bay Area and will remain so until August 25, giving 420 participants upwards of 300 hours of instruction in mobile app development, ITIL training, robotics training, and so on.
We feel that this program is worth bringing up again for a number of reasons. First of all, Girls Who Code addresses a relevant issue of demographic disparities in information technology training and placements. Regardless of the particular effectiveness of or need for a given program, one hopes that publicity for it will help to inspire girls and other underserved groups to pursue potentially lucrative information technology training if it is something they are interest in.
The Girls Who Code summer immersion program is also indicative of the ever-growing availability of information technology training, whether for young learners or for adults who are considering either expanding upon their existing careers or pursuing new ones. The website’s description of the program includes an impressive list of cities in which that program has operated during its first five years of existence. It also adds the impressive statistic that by the end of the year it will have reached 40,000 individual girls, the overwhelming majority of whom plan to pursue careers in technology or computing.
At the same time, it is worth noting that no information technology training program can have a fully comprehensive reach. Even given the geographic reach of Girls Who Code and other, differently-focused programs, there are countless cities and communities that have more interested learners than programs to accommodate them. In fact, it goes without saying that some young women who aspired to learn information technology training this summer didn’t make it into the Bay Area program, whether because of scheduling issues, program capacity, or any number of unforeseen obstacles.
It is always important to remember that for these people, there are Bay Area online information technology training programs that are equally accessible to young women and young men, and to people throughout the country or even throughout the world, operating on any number of wildly divergent schedules.
We are always thrilled to learn about immersive programs expanding across the country and reaching more and more young people who might have futures involving information technology training and placements. Although one might view these programs as competitors to our Bay Area information technology training, we recognize that the demand for quality instruction will always outpace the ability of any given program to provide it. And what’s more, as people find success in their chosen IT field, they will increasingly need to look to the flexibility of online training to fulfill their specific educational needs within the confines of their busy