Free online coding course for women opens for pre-registration

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      It’s no secret that the technology industry is a male-dominated sector. In the U.S. and Canada, women comprise roughly a quarter of the tech workforce, with most female employees working in admin and HR rather than developer roles.

      To combat that, volunteers from the University of Oxford created the 1M Women To Tech project. Aiming—as the name suggests—to teach a million women how to code, the scheme provides resources that hackers-to-be can access anywhere in the world.

      Its most recent initiative, the Summer of Code, is a three-month global program focused on instructing women in both basic and advanced software development. The course lasts for 12 weeks and caters to all skill levels, offering explanations and extensions for everyone from absolute beginners to professionals. Each block builds on the next, and participants are encouraged to break up the work by throwing their hats in the ring at weekly and monthly hackathons to put their talents to the test. Those who join in can win prizes as well as introductions to top employers.

      Women from all backgrounds are welcomed, and the only formal requirement is that participants identify as female or non-binary. Age is irrelevant to the organizers, as computers can’t see wrinkles, and they also can’t see acne.

      The weekly courses will explore everything from coding in Python and Javascript, learning the basics of blockchain and creating a cryptocurrency, developing AI, and making virtual worlds in augmented reality. Participants can choose which weeks they want to focus on, with the website offering suggestions for what areas will be most useful to marketing professionals, those working in humanities and social sciences, and those looking to find a job as a machine learning engineer.

      Pre-registration for the courses are now open, and the number of participants will be capped at 10 times the number of mentors to ensure that everyone completing the Summer of Code can have meaningful attention.

      Pre-registration will stay open until July 1, and individuals will be asked to formally commit on July 7. The course runs from July 14 until October 14.

      More information and signups can be found here.

      Follow Kate Wilson on Twitter @KateWilsonSays

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