The Future of Technology Careers

This week was one of my favorite units, Web Development! By the end of the week, our girls had built their own web page using HTML, CSS, and Java Script. One of the reasons I love this unit is how relevant it is. Unlike many of the other topics we have covered, go into the week already familiar with navigating websites. Previous exposure made students aware of what aspects and characteristics of websites they do and don't like. This made it easier for them to have specific features in mind when designing their own website. The curriculum also covered supplemental topics, and students immediately recognized their relevance and application. It made them more invested when learning some of the behind the scenes of how the Internet works, how to protect themselves against hackers, how to make websites accessible to screen-reader, and how a web developer might build a site for a client.

While the teaching team always tries to incorporate as much real-world information, experience, and advice as we can, we are incredibly lucky to have had so many guest speakers and field trips. These events, planned by both Girls Who Code and Warner Brothers, have given our class the opportunity to hear first-hand about the many kinds of careers that involve technology and the many paths people have taken to arrive at these jobs.

Last week, we heard from women working in TV Technology Production, involved in preparing television for both US and international release. They shared about the process of releasing a movie on DVD, including adding options for subtitles and lip dubbing, and adjusting features from movie theaters to the home theater. They also gave us a behind the scenes look at the different layers of sound added to TV clips. We watched a demonstration where they added dialogue, sound effects, and music to a clip one by one. Later, the girls participated in creating foley, the sound effects added post-production to a clip to enhance audio quality, to a clip and we watched the playbacks of the different variations.

This past Thursday, Warner Brothers hosted a "Womentoring" event for the girls, where different women from the company came and shared their stories. Some participated by rotating through the tables and others by being part of a panel. The women took this mentoring opportunity to share their personal stories, answer questions, and pass on advice. At the end of the day, they came back to the classroom and our girls showed them their websites. It was especially encouraging to see the girls proudly showing off their work to women they respected, and to see the women being genuinely interested in, supportive of, and impressed with what the girls had worked on that week.

This Friday, we went to the Gibson and Dunn law firm. We looked at several case studies, including patent litigation for technology products, privacy issues related to big data, and social justice cases. The director of information technology at the Broad, which right next to the Gibson and Dunn firm, also came to share about the evolving digital innovation being incorporated into the museum experience.

We've also had many speakers visit our class, including Warner Brother's Information Security Operations Center Manager, a Girls Who Code alumni and current Disney Movies Anywhere Mobile Engineer Intern, and a freelance motion graphics artist. We also got to visit Warner Games Technology, where we learned about the process of designing and creating video games. The girls then loved getting to play Injustice 2 in a game testing room!

The surprisingly large range of jobs represented in the past two weeks highlights the increasing integration of technology into so many fields. Furthermore, it was inspiring to hear the many, many paths that women took to these jobs, from studying engineering in college or landing in technology by complete chance. This emphasized the growing significance of having a background in technology in fields not traditionally thought of as "tech" fields. New technology-related jobs are rapidly appearing, including both jobs built around technology and jobs that require technology skills as technology becomes integrated in. Hopefully, this inspires students to consider how they can incorporate technology into their careers, and to realize that many of the jobs that will require technology haven't even been invented yet. They are the generation that gets to see a need in the industry and step in to fill it, or find a way to incorporate technology with their passions and create their own job. With hard work, curiosity, and the desire to keep learning, these girls get to be the ones to pioneer the future of technology careers!