Huge shoutout to educator and Code Breaker‘s Managing Director Daphne McMemeny for putting this project together. Be sure to give her a follow on twitter. Also check out www.DiscoverGracie.com for more Gracie content!

Katherine Johnson

Creola Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her “historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist”.

Watch the video here.

Edith Clarke

Edith Clarke was the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the United States, and the first female professor of electrical engineering in the country. She was the first woman to deliver a paper at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the first female engineer whose professional standing was recognized by Tau Beta Pi, and the first woman named as a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. She specialized in electrical power system analysis and wrote Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems.

Watch the video here.

Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She is believed by some to be the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of computers and as one of the first computer programmers.

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Beatrice Worsley

Beatrice “Trixie” Helen Worsley was the first female computer scientist in Canada. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge with Alan Turing and Douglas Hartree as advisers, the first Ph.D granted in what would today be known as computer science. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto’s Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen’s University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her untimely death at the age of 50.

Watch the video here.

Grace Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers.

Watch the video here.

Gracie is every student who has ever been searching for her purpose in school. She is every child who needs someone to unlock a world of discovery they don’t yet know exists. When her teacher brings a robot into the classroom and teaches Gracie to code, she unlocks a world of creativity, innovation, and discovery she’d never imagined. Follow Gracie as she learns to code, learns to problem solve and learns to take risks in her learning!

Anyone can learn to code and if you can learn to code, you can code to learn! Coding can be very abstract. It is a picturesque canvas. It supports one’s spatial awareness. It’s like playing chess and being five moves ahead based on three different scenarios. This is something students must develop in the 21^st century. 

Quite often, the first time you write code, the code doesn’t work. That’s important because that’s when innovation and problem solving happens! There are many benefits of learning to code. Coding empowers kids and puts them in control of the device. It builds mastery through experimentation. Coding fosters problem solving, logical thinking, critical and computational thinking. Most importantly, it is a safe space to take risks and learn from failure!

Grab a copy of these books here and follow Gracie on twitter!