We live in a world where technology is a driving force for innovation. New uses of technology, new gadgets, and inventions are changing the way we interact with each other, our environment, and even our world. It’s an amazing time to be alive!

Here at Girl Scouts, we want to inspire the next generation of awesome women to become tech innovators who work hard to make the world a better place. How are we doing that? With Tech Club!

What is Tech Club?

Tech Club gives 6th-10th grade girls in the Cincinnati and Dayton area the opportunity to build robots and learn to code in a fun, extracurricular setting with help from volunteers in technology fields. In the fall of 2016, we had 24 girls participate in this fun club, and for most of them this was their first tech-focused learning experience!

In Tech Club, we were able to build and experiment with a bread board and programmable robot! We programmed the robot to follow a black line on a white mat, but I wanted to see if I could make a track with tape for the robot to follow. I tried white tape and it didn’t work, so I placed the robot on a dark surface with white tape around it so that the dark surface was a line, and it worked! Tech Club was a great experience to learn some coding and experiment with robots! — Rebekah Davenport, Cincinnati Girl Scout

And while some of the activities were difficult (typing was not a skill many girls had mastered yet) and required girls to test their skills, try new things, and struggle through to a solution, girls learned to overcome their frustrations, brainstorm through obstacles, and persevere. Imperfect codes and failing test runs are just part of the design process when you’re a technology innovator!

Who did we partner with?

Tech Club was made possible by knowledgeable staff from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a technology company in the Cincinnati area, who showed girls how to build robots from scratch, write code line by line to make the robot move forward, backward, and turn in circles, and how to adjust sensors by writing code to change the variables.

In 2017 TCS staff plan to add a career-development connection to activities in Tech Club so that if girls love an activity they can understand the different careers they can pursue related to that activity!

Women are under-represented in the technology field, and we’re so excited that companies like TCS are helping us bridge that gap by asking their staff to volunteer in their communities and support girls with inspiring STEM programming. We couldn’t do it without them!

How can my girl get involved in Tech Club in 2017?

Girl Scouts of Western Ohio and TCS plan to host another Tech Club for girls in grades 6-10 on Sundays from August 27 to October 22, 2017.

For more information about Tech Club and how to join, contact the program and partnerships department at our Cincinnati office during the summer of 2017!