Hi. My name is Lubna Mahdania, a Binus student and a teacher in KodeKiddo.
I’ve never heard about Generation Girl until I got a message from Ms. Meil who recommended me to join their summer club program. As I read the brochure Ms. Meil sent me, I’ve learned that this program is basically a training camp program who will turn any female high school students into a computer whiz. It didn’t take much times for me to get interested in this idea. Right after that, I applied to join as a mentor. And by that, I had to wait for several months until the summer club. I was so excited to wait whether I would get accepted as a mentor or not!
One of the reasons why I found this summer club program interesting and why I really wanted to contribute to this amazing program is because I, as a female IT student, want to help female youngsters to learn about programming. This industry is filled with males as a majority, and I’m afraid that they might think that IT is not for them without even trying to learn about it, or even get underestimated just because they are female. Well, at least that’s what I thought before. I want them to see the IT field that includes coding, computational thinking, etc. is fun and interesting!
As time passed by, the wait is finally over. I got accepted as a mentor, thankfully. And to prepare for this amazing program, I had to work with a lot of cool people to create the lesson plan and stuff. Since I’m majoring in Mobile App department, I would teach them about Android and how to create a mobile app in a week.
We mentors prepared and practiced so hard for two months or so, before the d-day. With a full of hope that the kids would fall in love with mobile programming just like how we did.
And just like that. The time flew out so fast that the week 2 program of the summer club finally came! I was so excited yet so nervous because there was a little part of me that afraid the lesson would be so hard for the kids. But it was gone in no time as I met all of the 15 amazing girls that enrolled in the class that I taught in. They were all good and kind, had willing to learn and were so excited to learn about mobile app as well. I was so shocked that some of them already had a high motivation to create a mobile app even before joining the class, while the rest were just ‘following’ their family’s recommendation.
All that just made my motivation to teach them get up high. I shared some knowledges about mobile app that I know to them, as well as introduced them about the mighty Android Studio and how we use it as a tool to create a mobile app. The girls learned faster than I imagined. I was so glad that even when there were students who couldn’t join the class all-week, they still managed to learn and understand about the lesson. I was so impressed, once again!
On the fourth day, they had a task to create a mobile app as a project. And I once again was so impressed by how the girls could think about a lot of creative ideas about mobile app. In just a very short two days, they finally succeeded in creating their first mobile app. I might be just stood there calmly at that time, but I was so amazed and proud at what they’ve done. Well done, girls!
Even though the summer class was over, but I really hope that they could be more interested in programming in the future. They are still young and they surely have times to explore a lot of amazing things in the IT field. Technology is something that will change so fast and it just makes it so challenging to learn more. Since we’re talking about young age and IT, I also recommend kids to learn about computational thinking at a very young age. By learning about programming logics, it will help them to deepen their logic skills. Plus, it’s easier to teach them while they’re still young!
That’s why, on a daily basis, I spend my time as a coding instructor in KodeKiddo. With the knowledge that I have learned in college, I believe that I can help kids to learn more about computer programming and might as well to get them fall in love with it. I would be so proud if one day some of my students could be a successful IT people that one day could change the world!