Our Chicago days of service event, powered by Hack Club! <3
| Username | Role |
|---|---|
| Noor Elbanna | Lead Organizer, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Team Lead |
| Nila | Organizer & Storytelling |
| Emma Xing | Lead Dinner Organizer, PCB Team Lead |
| Eve Anderson | Sprig Team Lead |
| Sophia Deltas | CYOA Team Member |
| Aya Surheyao | CYOA Team Member |
| Stephanie Zhou | Sprig Team Lead |
| Tray Chen | Artistic Lead |
The students really enjoyed building their maze games in Sprig! We used the starting tutorial as a base and then helped them customize their individual games by adding levels, music, and other creative aspects. They had an amazing time seeing their visions come to life and experimenting with all that the Sprig program has to offer!
In this workshop, students learned about printed circuit boards, or PCBs. They were able to use EasyEDA to create a printed circuit board with an LED, battery, and switch, as well as add their own shapes and designs!
One of our students showing off her flower-shaped light up PCB!
Nearing the end of the event we decided it would be a fun opportunity to have all participants work together on a buil-your-own-adventure game in Python! Students learned about the logic behind the game like if/else statements, for loops, and were able to contrbute and brainstorm ideas of how the game should flow. To wrap up we played through all of the game's options and had a ton of fun seeing all the different possibilities!
The night before our hackathon, we had an inspirational dinner with a few fantastic women in tech. The dinner was held at the Siena Tavern, located in the Magnificent Mile area of Chicago. We hosted 7 Hack Club girls, 3 women in tech, and 1 staff member.
Our team alongside our honored guests at the dinner!
We were able to learn more about each of our guests' experiences as a woman in tech, learn about how they became interested in their specialties in tech, and hear their thoughts on keeping up with new technologies and trends. A special thank you to our guests: Brianne Caplan, Lisset Rico, and Jenni Munoz! Each of them was generous in sharing and inspiring our Hack Club members.
One thing that really resonated with us was the need for more diverse perspectives in the tech industry. Our discussion focused on how we, as individuals and as a group, can focus on using tech for good. We took this lesson with us to inspire our students at the Solstice Hackathon!
We wanted to create a PCB design that celebrated the coming of the summer solstice and the light of possibility for women and nonbinaries in all things programming! We designed the schematic and board using EasyEDA and exported our circuit boards to JLPCB for manufacturing. These PCBs would be gifts for the dinner guests and organizers. However, we were unable to get the PCBs made in time for the event. We were able to get one prototype built as proof of concept and used NFC tag writer to prompt a contact information form when scanned. This circuit builds of the design of the Harvest PCB, similarly addressing the issue of ‘networking acrobatics’. Our dinner guests were able to share their contact information with us so that we could easily have their personal PCBs delivered them after the event.
HUGE thank you to to Mr. Casey Smithand Mr. Jordan Knight at the UIUC ECE Shop for giving us an inside into the manufacturing world of PCBs and being able to help us under such tight circumstances. Seeing the machines copper etching, the delicate process of soldering, and the translation of schematics to real and working prototypes was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The special PCB prototype from ECE Shop!
Finally, we created Solstice themed lithopanes (transluscent 3D printed images that appear when light passes through) for the students as well as the dinner guests to take as souvenirs (HUGE thank you to Mr. Tom Kiesel who helped in 3D printing these magical creations)! With Solstice, not only did we want to emphasize the programming and software aspects of computer science, but how it also works alongside hardware and machinery. We want to make sure that students don't feel limited and encourage them to pursue tech's interdisciplinarity. Overall, Solstice was an incredible event filled with many challenges but even more celebrations and laughs. By the end, students were exhilarated by the world of tech and one shared with us how she wants to be a "dancer who codes!" and others willingly skipped their weekly pool treat to code with us.
Making of the Lithopane!
Thank you so much to everyone who made Solstice possible!
— Solstice Team ❤︎