draft r girls blog post

Author: hturner

.Rhistory

@@ -2,4 +2,5 @@
 **/.DS_Store
 .Rproj.user
 /_site/
-forwards.github.io.Rproj
+forwards.github.io.Rproj
+.Rhistory

.gitignore

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ optimize_img <- function(
     compression = "Zip", # only really makes difference for png
     format = "png" # recommend "png", can use NULL to get same format as input
 ){
-    img <- image_read(file.path(image_dir, file))
+    img <- image_read(file.path(input_dir, file))
 
     if (image_info(img)$width > width){
       # resize to `width` px, using specified filter to sample pixels
@@ -29,12 +29,12 @@ optimize_img <- function(
     # strip metadata (may include date photo taken colour profile, colour space
     if (strip) img <- image_strip(img)
 
-    if (is.null(format)) format <- file_ext(files[i])
+    if (is.null(format)) format <- file_ext(file)
 
     output_dir <- file.path(input_dir, "optimized")
     if (!dir.exists(output_dir)) dir.create(output_dir)
     output_file <- file.path(output_dir, 
-                             paste0(file_path_sans_ext(files[i]), ".",
+                             paste0(file_path_sans_ext(file), ".",
                                     format))
     image_write(img, output_file, 
                 format = format, quality = quality, compression = compression)

R/optimize_photo.R

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+---
+title: R Girls Open Event 2025
+author:
+  - name: Heather Turner
+  - name: Ella Kaye
+date: "2025-07-26"
+categories: [community]
+description: "Report of the R Girls Open Event 2025."
+draft: true
+---
+
+Forwards members Heather Turner and Ella Kaye were invited to attend the 
+"Data Science for Girls" open event hosted by 
+[R-Girls](https://greenoak.bham.sch.uk/r-girls-school-network/) at 
+[Green Oak Academy](https://greenoak.bham.sch.uk/), Birmingham, UK on 
+July 9 2025. They joined other guests from [Ascent](https://www.ascent.io/) 
+and [Health Data Research UK](https://www.hdruk.ac.uk/about-us/) to 
+find out how students at this girls' school have been using R.
+
+![From left to right: Yanica Said (Ascent), Heather Turner (Forwards), ?? (Teacher), Razia Ghani (Head Teacher), and Ella Kaye (Forwards) at the R Girls Open Event](group_photo.jpg)
+
+Below Heather and Ella report on this event.
+
+## Website Presentations
+
+The day started with an assembly of Years 7-9 (ages 11-14, around 50 students), 
+the school teachers and guests. Students from Years 8 and 9 (age 12-14) 
+presented websites they had created with 
+[Distill](https://pkgs.rstudio.com/distill/) as part of their Year 8 IT 
+lessons. 
+
+The girls had worked in small groups to design a website for a fantasy 
+online shop. This allowed a lot of creativity in designing logos, selecting 
+photos and writing marketing content. The students revealed their love of 
+makeup, fashion, animals, and more. Some highlights for us were a sweet treat 
+shop (very professional-looking!), a site about snow leopards (presented with 
+great humour!), and a shop promoting Afghani fashion (beautiful photos!).
+
+Each group gave a short speech and with a live demo. We were impressed 
+that the girls had got to grips with GitHub as well as editing the R markdown 
+source.
+
+## Computer Practical
+
+After a break, we joined a lesson being taught by Anisa Nawaz to 
+Year 7 students. It was only their second lesson using R and they were 
+learning how to create sequences with `seq()`, working in an R markdown 
+template.
+
+Along with other guests, we assisted by helping the 
+students to trouble-shoot issues. Understanding how to generate decreasing 
+sequences with a negative `by` argument required a bit of thinking, while 
+breaking R markdown chunks by typing code in the wrong place caused some 
+practical issues. But the girls did well!
+
+## Summary
+
+Overall, we were happy to see the enthusiasm from both staff and students
+in using R to support the girls' studies. There is a lot of pride in this 
+activity, as demonstrated by the display that greets you when you walk in:
+
+![The R Girls display right inside the main entrance](r_girls_display.jpeg){fig-alt:"A noticeboard visible on the facing wall, looking through an open door. On the board, a display with a flowery border, titled 'R-Girls Schools Network', followed by the pink R Girls logo. The display has examples of code and graphs, plus large text boxes with information.}
+Hopefully this experience gives the girls a positive view about using R or 
+other languages, that they can build on in the future.