There is a crisis in computer science education both in quality and access. The result of this crisis is that women and minorities are missing opportunities to advance academically and economically in a field whose employment potential far exceeds the number of students preparing for it. If we don't get more diverse participation in technology, then we miss out on innovations that are relevant and usable by a wider range of people.
We need to empower girls to imagine new futures for themselves as innovators and change agents in our technologically advancing world by providing them with solid foundational knowledge of computer science concepts and inspiring them to share their vision with the globally connected community.
9. There are many potential collaborators interested in addressing this issue. Who can help?
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Editor's Notes
Eric Roberts, Professor of Computer Science Stanford University. “Computer Science as an Essential 21st-Century Skill: Making the Case” opening keynote address, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: K-12 Workshop, Atlanta, Georgia, October 2010 ( ppt ). "The European Union as saying that in 10 years’ time there will be a lack of some 300,000 people to fill ICT jobs in the region; globally, a shortfall he put at the neighborhood of to 1.2 million." - ITU worries over declining female presence in ICT, vangardngr.com, (3/16/11)
"In the US in the 1980s, for example, young women were earning 37% of computer science degrees; today, that number has fallen to around 20%." - ITU worries over declining female presence in ICT, vangardngr.com, (3/16/11) - Girls and minorities are not represented in the CS field. - Many kids are not being exposed to programming until college. - AP CS is not a required course in high school. - School administrations don't understand what CS really means.
Girls often associate technology with white, nerdy, boring men "While teenage girls now use computers and the Internet at rates similar to boys, he said that girls are five times less likely to consider a technology-related career." - ITU worries over declining female presence in ICT, vangardngr.com, (3/16/11)
By age 13 girls determine a positive or negative attitude towards subjects like technology Why does this matter? This lack of diversity in technology means that we will all miss out on innovations that are relevant and usable by a wider range of people. To put it more bluntly, if males continue to dominate this field, we end up with more and more first-person shooter games.
My primary goal in exposing students to CS concepts is to demystify technology!
computers (open them up, know the name and purpose of each major component) hardware & software design (unplugged exercises to introduce concepts) applications (create a program) algorithmic processes (make your program do what you want - solve the problem) impact on society (privacy, plagiarism, collaboration, digital fluency)
At its most basic, programming is about creating a very specific set of instructions to accomplish a goal and then testing your instructions to see if the goal has been accomplished.
One of my favorite CS classes in college was programming at the machine code level because you were in control of everything. NetLogo provides a glimpse of this.
Scratch is a great platform for learning about programming in a inside/out sort of way. What I mean, is that you don't have to introduce concepts like classes, objects, methods, parameters, inheritance, variables. Programming with Scratch doesn't even really require a plan.
Programming with Alice requires more thought. Because it's based on the concept of creating your own 3D world, it is still very engaging, but it is also more complex. This is a programming environment where building the links between CS concepts and programming is important.
![Teen Tech Girls by Kim Wilkens [email_address] teentechgirls.wikispaces.com](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/teentechgirls-110517091231-phpapp01/85/Teen-Tech-Girls-1-320.jpg)
