Katy Dickinson

GHC Panel: Girl Geeks in High School

"Girl Geeks in High School: Technical Experiences of Future Inventors" was the panel I moderated this afternoon at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing here in Orlando, Florida. See my 3 August 2007 blog entry for a full panel description. My daughter Jessica and I worked on developing this panel for over six months. She and three High School girls from the Silicon Valley joined me on the stage today. Both she and I are blogging about it. (I haven't read Jessica's blog entry yet but you can read it at Feeling Elephants.)

I think the panel went well, both for the girls and for the audience. In our hour, we covered both questions the girls and I had discussed in advance plus new questions from the audience. We talked about how the girls use technology in school and for fun and what was working best for them. There was some range of opinions but the girls agreed on many points:

• There were some differences between male and female teachers of science, math, and technology but the gender of the teacher generally didn't matter.
• The gender of mentors mattered - females were much preferred.
• Laptops could be of great benefit in class but there was also temptation to misuse them during less interesting classes.
• No one used tablets nor had they seen them used effectively.
• Hands-on and interactive projects teach better and are more interesting.
• Many of their peers and adults also did not understand their interest in Engineering. However, their teachers and parents had encouraged and supported them.
• All of them came from families in which technology was used comfortably.

A very interesting question from the audience was whether the four girls saw themselves as users or creators of technology. They said they saw themselves "using to create" (being somewhere in-between using and creating). However, their examples of how they used technology were very sophisticated - far beyond the abilities of a passive simple user.

I agree with one of the audience members who told me later that she would be fascinated to see what these very talented and charming young women did in the next twenty years. I do look forward to watching their progress.

Official GHC 2007 Blogger. You may comment on this blog by visiting the GHC Forum. You can find me at http://blogs.sun.com/katysblog.

Posted at 08:32PM Oct 18, 2007 by katysblog in Hopper - Anita Borg Institute  |