A few weekends ago a 17 year old girl made a stride for ladies everywhere by winning a Hackathon event in Boston. The teenager–the only girl competing for the $2500 prize–created a product that allows you to avoid TV spoilers from your Twitter feed by creating blocks for your favorite shows. Brilliant, right?
I’m all for a great girl power story, and this one in particular struck a chord with me. In 2013, a time when it’s quite clear women can do anything, there was only one female participating. Coding and the world of tech still seems to be a boys club these days.
I’m the last person to consider myself a science and tech enthusiast. I haven’t touched a science class in four years and I’m not making any plans to develop the next great app. Recently, though, I developed an interest in learning the ways of the web and decided to explore opportunities to learn HTML and CSS for web design. The funny thing? It’s actually quite enjoyable to learn. Maybe you aren’t destined to be a web designer or engineer new software. That’s okay. But learning little bits of coding languages here and there is a great way to build on important skills in today’s work world. It’s another thing to add to the resume while helping to boost the numbers of women who can take a stab at becoming part of the boys club, maybe one day helping to break it down for good.
Want to pick up some skills? Here are great online options that don’t require leaving the house:
Treehouse
Treehouse is like learning coding from the fun geeky guys you went to high school with and made you laugh at goofy jokes. For a flat monthly rate of $25 you can work your way through a series of different “adventures” at your own pace, whether learning to be a web designer or developer, building apps, or getting the basics of the different coding languages. People have graduated their courses landing coding jobs, making it a worthwhile investment if looking to change careers or boost your existing skill set.
The Blog Designer Network
This site offers a variety of workshops for a small fee that cover coding, design, and other important web design topics. Course offerings change through time and prices vary per course. They’re typically taught through a mix of video and PDF materials. Other resources on the site include forums and a blog covering web design topics.
Skill Share
One of my recent discoveries, Skill Share features video classes on web design, programming apps, HTML & CSS, plus lots of other art and design-related topics. Courses typically run in the $20-$25 range and are taught online by a great group of experienced professionals. Have a skill you’d like to share with the world? You can also apply to teach a course.
The Girl’s Guide to Web Design
A popular web design option, this intense web design course helps teach you everything you need to know to build the perfect website for yourself or launch a web design career. The course–taught through video–is a little on the pricey side and currently unavailable due to updates. The glowing recommendations, though, might make it worth every penny.
Codecademy
Whether you’re looking to learn PHP, Ruby on Rails or brush up on your basic HTML, Codecademy offers interactive learning tools to learn at your own pace. The best part? It’s free!
By
Adair
I’m loving this! What a great topic, I’ve been looking for a way to teach myself HTML for a while now, and it normally involves a lot of boring reading that I cannot retain. This is awesome and interactive…already started teaching myself :). Thanks Sarah!
Sarah Eutsler
Glad you liked it, Adair! Good luck & have fun!
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