Skip to Main Content

What are you going to make?

We recently asked young girls to name female inventors – they couldn’t. Check it out

Microsoft is calling all girls and young women across Europe to #MakeWhatsNext. Why? Because we need more girls and young women to contribute their ideas to the world. We aim to support this generation with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to become the next Ada Lovelace or Mária Telkes or Maria Gaetana Agnesi in a world where technology is embedded into every aspect of our lives.

Interested in how to #MakeWhatsNext in your country? With 50 events and trainings across 27 countries reaching over 7,000 girls and young women between March – May, 2016, learn more by clicking on your country event link below.

skool-tile

sway-tile

Girls #MakeWhatsNext

Are you interested in learning more? No fear, we’ve got you covered. First check out this piece all about getting started on your own coding journey. Still looking for more info on how you can improve your digital skills? We’ve compiled a list of resources to start you on your journey.

Microsoft YouthSpark Hub  – YouthSpark gives you the tools and training to express what you love through computer science. Our free programs and resources will help you build digital skills and explore how learning computer science can help you go further.

Hour of Code – Working in partnership with Code.org, a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, each year Microsoft supports the Hour of Code initiative – an annual event encouraging participants to give up 60 minutes for an introduction to code. While Hour of Code takes place in December, anybody can use Hour of Code resources anytime. Visit code.org/learn to find online tutorials for beginners teaching simple drag and drop programming, as well as introductions to specific languages, like JavaScript or Python.

Kodu Game Lab – 2009 saw Microsoft launch the Kodu Kup, an annual coding competition challenging young people to develop their own games with user-friendly Kodu Game Lab tools. Like Hour of Code, these tools are available all year round and are a great way to enter the world of coding.

Project Spark is a game creation tool for Windows and Xbox One that provides a great introduction to both game design and learning to code. Originally based on Kodu Game Lab, Project Spark employs a simplified visual approach to programming that replaces typical complex coding terms for simple built on words like ‘When’ and ‘Do’. For example, a playable character could be programmed using the following phrase ‘WHEN a player presses space, DO jump’.

Small Basic – Microsoft Small Basic combines a fun and friendly learning environment with a very simple programming language. In just a few lines of code, a user can be well on their way to creating their very own game. Based on .Net technology, skills acquired can be applied to other .Net programming languages like Visual Basic. You can download Small Basic here.

CodeAcademy – Accessible and free to use, CodeAcademy is one of the most popular online resources to learn and develop coding skills. To date, over 25 million people have already used the site’s tutorials to get started. Users can select from a range of languages and technologies including JavaScript, HTML, SQL, Ruby and jQuery.

Code Avengers provides fun and interactive programming courses that will teach you how to code games, apps and web sites using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.