Comments on: HOWTO: Create an award for girls in tech

By: A link roundup without a bicycle (2nd October, 2009) | Geek Feminism Blog

A link roundup without a bicycle (2nd October, 2009) | Geek Feminism Blog — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:02:36 +0000

[...] My name is Mel, and Iâ€™m femaleâ€¦ and feminist. She’s also taking Emma Jane Hogbin’s suggestion to create an award for girls in [...]

By: emmajane

emmajane — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:01:53 +0000

Elementary schools have awards too! They also have science fairs. All of which probably needs sponsorship; however, this is not about trying to fund an entire generation of girls. This is about helping one female student to become an AWARD WINNER! You’re giving a student a sense of pride that she’ll carry with her the rest of her life when you bestow her with an award. Let’s make more girls proud of their interest in technology and make them award winners. :)

By: Terri

Terri — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:22:33 +0000

We had several levels of “programming class” — I “fondly” remember losing marks on an assignment ’cause my teacher couldn’t understand the if statement I used (I think it had an and and an or or something. Yes, I meant those duplicated words.). He was a very nice calculus teacher who was simply out of his element, and now that I’m an adult I have a lot more sympathy… but if I’d relied upon lessons in school, I likely never would have stuck with programming. (As it happens, my interest was greatly nurtured by other students where my teachers failed.)

Anyhow, love this idea, and will keep it in mind. I’m more tempted to do something for my elementary school, which is less affluent than my secondary, but the logistics would probably be slightly different… have to think about it.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:29:51 +0000

We started whenever we wanted, but if we wanted to take all 3 years we’d have to start in 10th grade. There was one other girl taking VB 1 (1 semester), but she was gone for VB 2. There were about 45 people total in VB 1. VB 2 had more like 25-30 kids, with me as the only girl. Java 1 had 14. Java 2 has *never* been run since 1/2 the Java 1 kids graduate, and then there aren’t enough students left to run Java 2.

By: jadelennox

jadelennox — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:12:21 +0000

wow, a concrete thing I can actually do. What a great suggestion.

By: Yvi

Yvi — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:35:44 +0000

We started the course in eleventh grade (we had 13 over here when I was in school) with two courses, both with between 22-28 people, if I remember correctly. About 20-something girls and the same number of boys or something. After the first year there was only one course of 20 people left and 11 of us stayed until the end. As far as I can tell two people went into a CS direction after school, one into engineering.

As a bit of an aside, I personally wasn’t thrilled by being in the all-girls course, but the other one clashed with my time schedule – normally, you could choose, but me taking maths, chemistry, biology, and programming made my schedule a bit of a nightmare. I can now see how it was a good thing we had it, though. People asking basic questions might have annoyed me because I was usually the one that had to answer them, being done with the exercises first, but at least they felt more comfortable asking them.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:15:59 +0000

Wow only 3 girls took programming while I was in HS. I was the only one that went more than 1 semester.

By: Yvi

Yvi — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:08:23 +0000

Oh, that sounds very nice! I don’t yet have any kind of billable hour value, as I am still a student., but I will keep that idea in mind. I had three years of programming classes in ‘high school’ (I am not from the US, hence the quotes) without which I might have never gone into that direction. For the first year we had a girl-only and a mixed class, which many of my fellow students found nice and I think only because of that we were 5 female and 6 male students in that class the last year.

Anyway, I think it’s great you did that and that you are telling others how to do that.