Koding My Way Through the Summer

My experience at Kode With Klossy 2020 camp

I spent two weeks in August at an online camp called Kode With Klossy. For those unfamiliar with it (which I don’t blame you, I only discovered it through TikTok), KodeWith Klossy is a free coding camp made for female-identifying people between ages 13 and 18. It was created by Karlie Kloss in 2015 and, at the time, was only in 3 cities. It has expanded since then to cities all over the United States. However, this summer, due to COVID-related reasons, camps were made online, and therefore open to anyone all over the world. I applied in early April and discovered that I got in mid-May. Though there was an option for app development, I chose to do the web development course which focuses on three coding languages: JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

I was nervous going into the camp despite having taken a coding class at school the year prior. However, looking back, my fears were completely irrational. Only 20% of people had computer science experience as it was not a requirement. 

The camp was 10 days, from 10:45 in the morning to 4:15 in the afternoon, and took place entirely on Zoom. This was good for me as during these two weeks, I was also on a road trip to Philadelphia to drop my sister off at college. The camp had around 350 scholars (the name for camp attendees), and we were split up into 14 “houses.” The set-up of the class would be that the two main instructors, Tara Tran and Abby Slovick, would teach the lesson to the entire class, and then we would break into the houses to go over the lesson and do practice problems. Though the camp was virtual, the instructor assistants did an excellent job of making sure we made connections through fun brain breaks and other games. 

Throughout the camp, we got to listen to such inspirational speakers who told us of their experiences in the computer science field, including Karlie Kloss and Ashton Kutcher. 

After learning the three coding languages in seven days, we were given two days to make our own website (which is not very easy). We were put into groups of three, and we worked very hard to make a functioning website. We had to create a pitch, design, website, and demo presentation. My group made a website that provided resources for the Black Lives Matter movement, and you can read it here: https://final-project.madelineleano.repl.co/index.html

I highly recommend this camp to anyone interested in computer science or just wants to be challenged for the summer. I know that I will be using these skills in the near future!