Summer Camp/Storytelling

[Naala Brewer]

Hi Edwin,

I understand your position.  I have been working with a National Science 
Foundation grant for the past 2 years at the University of Kansas which is 
geared towards attracting minorities (girls being one of them) into SMET 
(Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology).  And I am a woman who 
went to a predominantly male dominated school (Georgia Institute of 
Technology) and chose to pursue predominantly male dominated fields - 
Mathematics, Physics, and Technology.  So I have experience as a girl being 
attracted to technical fields and as an adult attracting girls into 
technical fields.

As far as attracting girls, I have found that you have to find out what they 
are interested in, as Vincent mentioned.  You cannot assume they are 
interested in one thing or another because this is what statistics have 
shown.  For example, I find the very limited supply of video games geared 
towards girls to be almost insulting; e.g. Barbies running through the 
forest trying to catch stars and butterflies.

Storytelling is not something that any of the 9-11th grade girls that I 
worked with the past 2 years were interested in.  They were more interested 
in creating music, color, motion, and definite sequences in the Squeak, 
swiki, html, or Java programming.  The development of whatever they were 
making was of the same level of difficulty as the boys and the programming 
skills were exactly the same as the boys.  The final aesthetics of the 
projects seemed to be the only difference - girls seemed to prefer pastels 
and pretty pictures, whereas the boys preferred cars, cars, cars, and 
Japanese animation.

Once the girls realized that they could create technical projects with their 
own personal style and touch, they were flocking to the computer classes as 
much as the boys.

With my best,
Naala

>From: "Edwin Pilobello" <e_pilobello at attbi.com>
>Reply-To: squeakland at squeakland.org
>To: <squeakland at squeakland.org>
>Subject: RE: Summer Camp
>Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 08:27:05 -0700
>
>We have a program called AWSEM http://www.ogi.edu/satacad/awsem.html.
>The impetus to develop more offerings that attract girls into Science,
>Engineering and Math comes from AWSEM funding.  Inspite of their great
>role models, participation has been low.  They have asked me to use the
>Classes Program to develop "specially for girls" course offerings.
>
>I have three daughters who are all technically inclined.  According to
>their grandfather, their sterling accomplishments is proof that the IQ
>gene skips a generation!
>
>;-) Edwin

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