Five Questions With: Ed Graves

Ed Graves, regional librarian at the Providence Community Library’s Rochambeau location, discussed the library’s new Girls Who Code Club with Providence Business News. He said it is the first public club in the state, and there are plans to offer it again next year as well. Any girl in grades six through 12 was eligible to join. The club launched in January and will conclude for the year May 21. Signups will begin in August for the fall session starting in September.

PBN: Where did the idea for the new Girls Who Code Club come from and how is it going?
GRAVES:
As a public library, we provide programs and services that meet the needs of our community. Many program ideas come from individuals who are passionate about sharing their skills and passions with others, and the library offers a space to do that. Girls Who Code runs an intensive program in Boston over the summer. Last fall, one of their alumni, high school student Isabella Millard, contacted me with a request to host a club. Together we applied and were lucky enough to be paired with a volunteer instructor, Gryte Satas in the Computer Science Department at Brown University.
The club attracted interested girls and parents from all over Rhode Island. We’ve had a consistent group of girls over the winter that learned programming basics, made connections and grew more confident in their skills over the duration of the class.

PBN: Will the club be offered again next year – are there plans to expand it?
GRAVES:
Yes, our library has been approved for a second year of classes to begin in the fall and continue for the duration of the school year. Once we know what the level of experience is among that cohort, the goal is to work on collaborative projects that address needs in people’s lives. We are brainstorming field trips or want to bring in guest speakers from local startups, so we’re moving towards real life applications. I am looking forward to Code.org’s Hour of Code coming up in December as part of Computer Science Education Week.

PBN: What are the girls learning and how many are in the club?
GRAVES:
On the technical level, girls in the club are primarily learning Scratch, which is a simplified programming language created at [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] that is used to teach the basics of coding. The instructor provides exposure to programming, markup languages and algorithms depending on where the student is at, from beginner to intermediate. Girls also gain social and emotional development through mentorship and validating their interests in computer science. This is unique to programs like Girls Who Code and Girls Rock! RI; providing “girls only” peer-centered structured learning environments is important in fields where women are underrepresented and face additional barriers. We have seats for about 20-25 girls in grades 6-12.

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PBN: What are some of the other tech-related initiatives at the library for children?
GRAVES:
If you haven’t visited your library lately, you may be surprised how much of what we do is tech-related. We have computer labs, free wifi, mobile hotpots and eBooks. We have a regular crowd of kids running multiplayer gaming on the computers and designing their own games most days after school and weekends. On Fridays, we open up our computer lab for Minecraft and host a server with a replica of Knight Memorial Library on Elmwood Avenue. City-wide, some recent library programs have covered animation, video production and Lego robotics.
At the Rochambeau Library, we’re looking at ways upgrade the equipment in our computer lab to support Girls Who Code and a number of other functions as a digital media, gaming and design lab. I’m very interested in identifying partners that could help us further this initiative so we can expand our ability to offer learning opportunities.

PBN:Do you offer any classes on computers for adults (basic operation, coding, etc.)?
GRAVES:
We offered digital literacy classes for adults for some time, but learned that classroom instruction wasn’t necessarily a good model for busy people, so we decided to focus on people’s immediate needs. For the past couple years, we’ve held numerous sessions to help people enroll online with HealthSourceRI, the statewide health insurance exchange. Then we focused on older adults and seniors, and everyone wanted to know about Facebook, so that was popular. We do a lot of instruction on mobile devices and helping people download eBooks from the library. We schedule one-on-one tech help sessions since many people are trying to learn how to use the technology they already own.

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