Joan Clarke Challenge in Mexico
The Prosperity Fund organised a programming workshop for young students to commemorate the International Women’s Day.
Joan Clarke Challenge in Mexico
As part of the International Women’s Day activities, the British Embassy in Mexico through the Prosperity Fund partnered with Jacaranda Education for the design and implementation of a programming and coding workshop for female students from public schools.
As a response to the worrying reality of the gap for women and girls to access education on STEM topics, this workshop had the objective to make the students face technology with a practical experience. It was backed up by the Maker educative movement, which essence is practical learning where students learn by doing.
This is the second consecutive year that this workshop is given to female students and professors as part of the International Women’s Day activities. This year it was named Joan Clarke Challenge in honour of the life and work of the British cryptographer Joan Clarke. She was part of the Alan Turing’s team that helped to decode encrypted messages during World War Two. The students learned about Joan Clarke’s life and the challenges she overcame before sexism and gender discrimination. The students reflected on the current barriers for girls in Mexico and the world and their personal context.
The first day of activities the students built their own computers using Raspberry Pi 3. Raspberry Pi is a British organisation that manufactures low cost microcomputers designed to encourage technical and computer science education in schools. The students learnt about the computer components and different operative systems. During the second day the students learnt to use programming languages such as Python. They participated in a challenge consistent of a series of problems they solved. The challenge culminated with the creation of an original code for a program to play music.
There were 40 students and 10 professors from 5 technical public schools. The host school kept the computers, while the two challenge winners obtained equipment to learn more about technology and coding.
Michael Beckwith, Director of Jacaranda Education, said:
We are proud of our collaboration with the British Embassy in Mexico for the creation of a Maker Space in Mexico, which students from public schools can use to have a first-hand experience in the Maker education. One year after its creation, we celebrate it success with the Joan Clarke Challenge.