Written by Over the last year, I have become “fired up” about the gender gap of women entering into STEM careers. This is a direct result of our schools failing young women in providing educational opportunities and inspiration into these industries. I see this first hand at our school, where the programming course is not even being offered anymore due to lack of interest. What the what????!!!? Here we are a laptop school with so many technology resources available, and no one is choosing to pursue programming studies! As well, as a mother to a curious and outgoing young girl, how can I provide this inspiration to her at her young age.
So….here is where I sit for my action plan for Cohort21. I hope to explore how I can inspire our Branksome students to get “fired up” about computer science and provide opportunities for them to engage with young women in technology.
Luckily, there is so much being shared on social networks about this topic, and it will be easy to find resources. The challenge that I find is that there is so much and I spend so much time looking at them!
Short-term steps that I have coming up is a technology-themed assembly with our middle school students where we have a panel of women from http://www.girlslearningcode.com/ coming to speak to them about their experiences. I hope that this will help start the conversation with our students.
Now I need to come up with a larger action plan for this! Woo hoo!
Hi Erin,
I love that you’re ‘fired up’ over this topic already as well! It’s a great start for a very important action plan that is looking at best practices around gender gap in computer science. You will be interested in this article and it’s insights into the larger picture: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-the-engineering-and-science-gender-gap If you like it…Diigo it!
Also, just this month in the Huffington Post, there was this article that was pushing for solutions to reducing this gender gap as well. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/celia-islam/closing-the-stem-gender-g_b_3779893.html
I imagine that SCS and even co-ed school would be interested in this topic, and as a start you may want to poll these schools to get a feel for where their female students are at with this issue. What do their teachers do about it, etc…
I’m keen to see where this takes you. Thanks for being there on Saturday, and lending your expertise to the group!
best,
garth.
Me too!! Me too!! Just two weeks ago, I *almost* switched my C21 focus to the EXACT same thing!! I’m at a tech-innovative school nearby; since we are so close, perhaps we can work together on some ideas? I am actually in the process of gathering data on the last 7 years of our graduates and what their courses were in grade 12, to see exactly how our co-ed school is “performing” regarding the gender gap.
… It was also the focus of my Master’s degree: I researched the causes of the gender gap in Mathematics. Interestingly, 10 years ago all the data pointed to toys and play.
At any rate, this is a project that I am slowly building up to and hope to put into action in the *next* school year. For C21 I am keeping my planned focus, on math and classrooms and processes and efficiency and student independence, all of which I still need to blog about.
Can’t wait to see where this takes you!
How did we get to this point where girls need to intentionally be led to the fields of computer science and technology? Is this an environmental contagion? I am looking forward Erin to continue to follow your progress and action plan to confront this all-important societal issue at the micro level of the single-gendered school community.
Two teachers at my school are getting our Grade 7 girls (at BSS) involved with the hour of code (I’ve actually passed your blog on to them in the hopes that they might connect with you about this): might be an interesting thing to check out!
http://code.org/
Also, read Tim Cooper’s post here about coding http://blogs.yorkschool.com/21sttech/?p=881 …he is asking questions about coding that I think will really resonate with you. Check out his writing and maybe reach out to him!
Erin,
We are really looking forward to your action plan post and the area of teaching and learning you would like to explore. Remember that before publishing your post be sure to add an action plan category and tag to your post.
Refresher How-To Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3QG8WcSPoU
Also
* Be sure to read at least one other blog and comment on it.
* Don’t Stress… Your Action Plan post can be in the form of a question, musings, or concrete task. It can be short, it can be long………it just has to be meaningful to YOU!
Go flipped library!!
Justin