MOOCs and Planning my Year

I received my C++ Developer certificate in the mail yesterday, from the classes I had been taking through UAH.

I also made a video this month for YouTube, demonstrating my Lego Mindstorms bumpbot. I've received feedback that I plan to incorporate into a re-do. I'm considering a series of these videos, with Mindstorms robots, then Arduino projects, and then Raspberry Pi, as STEM outreach.

I went back to Codecademy and finished up their Python training. The discussion board listed several MOOCs that we could take to continue that work, so next I went over to Coursera and EdX. I found a number of programming and tech-related courses to sign up for and brush up on skills.

Since most of the MOOCs didn't start right away, I've moved on to Java on Codecademy. I figure if I do one segment per day of Codecademy, and one section of the MOOCs, I should be able to get the work done.

Breaking things

MIT Press has a book, "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing," (Title link goes straight to the book on Amazon) which discusses how family, education, and institutional barriers often keep Computer Science a women's field.  (Photo link below connects to my Amazon Associates account.)

A short synopsis is that boys are often encouraged to take things apart and "break things," while girls are often conditioned not to do that.

Programming

One of the classes I took in my first semester was C programming.  The class was held in the huge lecture hall in the Class of 1950 building.  The class looked to me to have a decent mix of guys and gals, but then we were divided into sections for our lab homework.  While I had a female Teaching Assistant, I was one of only three female students in the lab.  The rest were all guys.

Registering for college classes.

Purdue had a Day on Campus for incoming students to attend over the summer, before starting classes.  It seemed like most students had their parents with them, but my parents didn't come.  I wanted to bring my high school friend, but they said no to that too.  So I made the 3-hour drive each way by myself, first road trip.

More on choosing a major

A few months ago, I wrote a little bit about What to Study, but I want to come back to that topic for a bit.  In my plan of study for my first high school, I had intended to take a keyboarding class in my Junior year.  As I recall, that was a recent change, the course used to be just Typing.  When we moved to Indiana, and I found myself at the local public school for my Junior year, the closest they had to Keyboarding was a Computer Skills course.  So I took the Computer Skills course, and to this day I am glad that I did