CSCade (Cascade)

Creating computer science games for young girls to spark interest and get hands-on with complex, real-world topics in a fun, easy, and accessible way

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Inspiration

As women in computer science, we are acutely familiar with the steep learning curve associated with learning basic computer science concepts taught in the introductory CS classes. This barrier has stopped many women: while 75% of young girls are interested in CS, only 25% of software jobs are held by women. This will continue to be an issue for women, as it is estimated that 90% of jobs now require technical competence, including programming knowledge. We must change the way we encourage and educate young girls and give them the confidence to pursue computer science.

Once we learned these concepts ourselves after years of perseverance, we realized that we introduce the most basic versions of these concepts with simple, small, and fun games. Thus, we started CSCade.

What it does

A comprehensive educational dashboard to introduce complex Computer Science topics in a simple way via fun, educational games in order to make CS more accessible.

Some games we came up with and implemented include:

  1. LinkedSnake: a modified snake game designed to teach what a linked list data structure is and how to access, add, and delete elements of a linked list.
  2. Papa's Pipeline: a pizza restaurant game teaches how a CPU works and the concepts around pipelining.
  3. HashFactory: a factory sorting game to demystify the concepts of hashing functions and hash maps.
  4. Threads and Needle: a sewing game to teach how threads of execution function inside a computer's operating system.
  5. Shopping Cart Hero: a shopping game to help students understand and master concepts around Git.
  6. Jewel Thief: a thief game to visualize dynamic programming and solve the knapsack algorithm problem.

How we built it

We used multiple languages including HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and Python. We used HTML/CSS and JavaScript to create the webpage that stores our games and created an animated 2D interactive game with JavaScript as well. We also used the library tkinder in Python to create another game.

Challenges we ran into

We had to review new some CS concepts in order to code games for them. In addition, we had to learn new tools like graphics in JavaScript and the tkinder library in Python. We also learned basic game development concepts, such as the structure of the game loop and how to development games.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being coding not only two games but also an interactive website.

What's next for CSCade

Implementing data analytics for creating a better experience for students and a leaderboard to share your progress.

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