[Learn IT girls!] Mentoring Ruby on Rails - 1

Voila ! I am so excited to let you all know that this winter, I will be part of Learn IT girls program !

What is Learn IT girls ? What is their aim ?

Our aim is to help women learn a programming language while doing an awesome project! But don't worry, you're not alone in this journey, each scholar has a mentor that guides them on their path. There are many roads you can take and we will make sure you go on the one that is best for you - without missing out on the important features of the chosen language.

I will be mentoring +Dinu Sandaru and the programming language is Ruby and Rails. She is from Sri-Lanka. I was in contact with her before she was assigned as a student to me. She is also selected to participate in Season of KDE 2014.

Last week we met over various social networking platforms, connects and learn more about each-other, about what she wants, and try to help her choose the best application for her. I shared some resources with her to have a starting point. We brainstormed many projects in the past week and finalized an application for expense splitting. She made a list of features to be incorporated and I shared some basic UI models over whatsapp. The next step is framing classes, modules etc, which will be implemented over the next few months ! :)

The next blog-posts for the entire program are on the way and most of them will be posted by +Dinu.

Wish you all the best dearie ! <3 

Let rock with an awesome app at the end of this program ! :*

 

[Open Source] Call for participation : Google Code In 2014

BRL-CAD is one of the 12 organizations, who is selected as a mentoring organization for Google Code In 2014. I will be mentoring as a part of this open source organization, second year in a row. 

The Google Code-in is a contest to introduce pre-university students (ages 13-17) to the many kinds of contributions that make open source software development possible. The contest runs from December 1, 2014 to January 19, 2015. For many students the Google Code-in contest is their first introduction to open source development.

Pre-university kids from 13-17 years, who are already contributing to open source or want to know what open source is and getting first hand experience in contributing to open source are WELCOMED and highly ENCOURAGED to participated. :) Don't be afraid, if you think it would be all coding and geeks stuffs ! I assure, we have tasks which you can contribute (except coding too) :') For details on types of tasks, read below.

These tasks include:

1. Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
2. Documentation/Training: Tasks related to creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
3. Outreach/Research Tasks related to community management, outreach/marketing or studying problems and recommending solutions
4. Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
5. User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction.
   
   
   Students earn one point for each task completed. Students will receive a certificate for completing one task and can earn a t-shirt when they complete three tasks. At the end of the contest each of the open source organizations will name two (2) grand prize winners for their organization based upon the students’ body of work. The grand prize winners will receive a trip to Google’s Mountain View, California, USA Headquarters for themselves and a parent or legal guardian for an award ceremony, an opportunity to meet with Google engineers, explore the Google campus and have a fun day in the San Francisco, California sun.
   
   For more details on contributing to BRL-CAD, you can visit here and here. [ PS: Both the information pages are created by me. ;) I am so excited to be a mentor ! :) ]

You can always hangout on irc (#brlcad channel on freenode server) or send a mail to our mailing list at brlcad-devel@lists.sourceforge.net regarding any doubts or just say a hello. !

Wish you all the best ! :)

[Open Source] Call for participating in Season of KDE

If you are planning to start contributing to open source or a GSoC 2015 aspirant , you are at the right place ! Season of KDE is now accepting applications !

Student application deadline:5 November 2014, 12pm UTC.

To head, start from season.kde.org . 

Season of KDE is an outreach program hosted by the KDE community.
To learn how to apply, see the announcement article.
For some inspiration for your proposals, take a look at our Ideas page.

Bruno Coudoin and I would be mentoring one or two students for the project "Adding new activities to GCompris". The idea description is here.

Go through the idea page and if this sounds interesting to you, you are reqired to follow these steps:

1. Register as a student on season.kde.org

2. Read more about GCompris and get famaliar with this suite's application.

3. From Ubuntu Software Centre, you can install and play some activities.(optional)

4. Propose the project with the following format:

Name:

Country:

TimeZone: (in UTC)

About Me:

Project Title:

Detailed Project Description:

Technical Requirements:

Final expected outcome:

Timeline:

My availability and other commitments during period:

Why me ?

5. For head-start and a bonus point, try building an exercise-activity. The manual is here.

6. If you get stuck at any of the above steps, feel free to either comment here or you can mail at mailing list at gcompris-devel(at)lists(dot)sourceforge(dot)net or me in person at kesha(dot)shah1106(at)gmail(dot)com.

Wish you good luck ! :)