Girl Geek Dinner at Mekong: Gadgets that Get Girls Coding

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This month, we'll focus on technologies that teach girls to code using games and devices.

Tiffany France (www.linkedin.com/pub/tiffany-france/10/932/629) talks to us about Raspberry Pi and Sonail Shetty (www.linkedin.com/in/sonalishetty) introduces Sphero .

Gamification techniques can quickly make traditionally boring, painful, otherwise mundane activities fun. The application of game mechanics in a non-game context is why we gleefully battle for mayorship of our favorite coffee shops on FourSquare, how our FitBits encourage us to climb more stairs, and how many boys and girls are now learning to code.

Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org) is a tiny, computer that plugs into a keyboard and your TV. Despite the size, this cute little computer can capably manage tasks such as spreadsheets, word processing, games. The creative uses for a simple, portable, and affordable computer are varied and at times surprising, but the impetus for the development of the Raspberry Pi and the main focus of the Foundation is to make it an affordable and workable tool to help kids all over the world learn to code.

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Sphero (http://www.gosphero.com/ ) is a robot ball you control with your smart phone. With 20+ apps and a growing library, there are plenty of games for the whole family. What's really cool about Sphero though is how it's being used to teach programming and augment classroom education.

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