During the 2018/2019 school year, 9 ENSTA Bretagne student engineers went to nearby colleges to train their students in programming (Python language).
The "L codent L créent" project aims to show these young girls that careers in informatics are accessible, creative and just as suitable for them.
The "L codent L créent" project aims to show these young girls that careers in informatics are accessible, creative and just as suitable for them.
Every week, they meet the girls in order to create digital work. To do so, they have to program. This exercise is often preferred by boys and yet…the first computer programmer was a British woman called Ada de Lovelace.
There are still too few women in the digital sector. They represent less than a third of the payroll in this lucrative sector.
*Source BIPE – Syntec Numérique Semestrial Conference – June 2018
*Source BIPE – Syntec Numérique Semestrial Conference – June 2018
To break the gender stereotypes and show the girls that informatics is also a field that they can explore, Cécile Plaud, lecturer at ENSTA Bretagne, and Pascale Gautron, informatics teacher, organized the "L Codent L Créent" initiative following on from the “Les filles qui” project of the University of Western Brittany (UBO) (Programming workshops for primary school girls)..
For the first edition, 9 ENSTA Bretagne students volunteered to teach Python language to 60 high school girls (4 high schools in the Brest area took part).
A girl student explains
We all have personal reasons as to why we joined this project. We come from different regions and schools, and yet, we all arrived in engineering school when most girls continue to do literature studies for example. We would like you to take some time to think about what you like and whatever happens, don’t hold back!
Tuesday 4 June, the high school girls involved in the project came to ENSTA Bretagne to discover the engineering school and what the other students had done. Some worked on mandala style creations (cf.picture opposite), others programmed small games such as hangman or Chifoumi (Rock-Paper-Scissors).
The ENSTA Bretagne student-engineers who taught them programming were present to welcome them and accompany them all afternoon.
The feedback from this first edition was positive. ENSTA Bretagne and the participating colleges would like to do this again next year.
The « Lcodent, Lcréent » project was supported by the Blaise Pascal Foundation of the Crédit Mutuel Arkéa.
