Math is Girls' Play
Margo Varadi covers an interesting camp run by IBM, on volunteer power.
Mmmm, okay, so this is corporate sponsored, but that doesn't really matter in the context that so many schools have partnerships with IBM. We're not singling out only two schools per country, or something like that. According to IBM's press release, more than 1500 girls will be attending these camps from May to October.
Varadi writes on this one girl's group of 36, in Markham. Listen to this golden nugget; "after just a day and a half, Courtney and her fellow classmates are wondering why school can't be like this. If classrooms were this cool, Courtney says, she wouldn't have struggled so hard to get through her last year. My first two semesters of science I got a 50. she says. I just didn't want to do [science]... it was kinda boring ... This camp has made science more fun. The entire article is full of these kind of insights, most of them coming from the interviews with girls.
This is perfectly juxtaposed to the Miss G article (young women advocating a change in awareness of female role models through women's studies), and works so well with this article because it interviews the students themselves, and finds out their viewpoints on what needs to change in the education system in order to make learning more ... well, memorable. (Now, that's what my university program is spending four years teaching us; make things memorable, that's how your message will stick.)
See my next blog, below this one. I hadn't even analyzed this article yet when I wrote it, but those are my points. Get students into the real world as well as in the class-room, if it takes a community to raise a child, a few teachers can't raise 200 kids in their school alone. Get the community involved! Take learning outside the classroom. Teach children, and, in the case of this article girls, to keep an open mind, and learn how to learn in the real world. Learn how to think and be creative. A student supports my point; "it is best when students can relate to what they're learning; the roller coaster makes all these terms like kinetic energy and potential energy mean something because you have a visual [concrete, real-world] representation. A lot of people can't learn by just listening. This reinforces things you need to learn, like terminology and definitions."
But wait, it gets even better! "The point of EXCITE for IBM is to get girls more interested in technology . The program pairs them up with mentors, women on staff who keep in touch in the year after camp and encourage the students to consider careers in science and IT ..." Good point. Let's give the girls real role models, and people who can take them out of the malls.
The thing I don't like about this location is a couple of the girls seeming obsession with the "stuff" they can get afterwards. They want to make a m$ll$on a year to live their dream life, and IT can take them there. O God. So rich women helping rich girls learn tech, eh? THAT is corporatism.
Now, let's relocate to "inner-city-ness". Give those girls the same chance in the same programs. Get them out of the malls and the gangs, etc, and show them that there is a whole different world out there, and give them more caring and supportive role models (yes, I am suggesting that there may be a few employees in that bunch who are snoodocrats out for tax breaks!) who will be willing to take them on "Big Sister of Canada" style and mentor them into a higher level of self-confidence. That would differentiate the program from others, so that it makes a difference in the world, not just supports some Markham/Brazilian/Thailand rich girls. Hopefully there are many more examples like the latter. Can you imagine living in Habitat for Housing, your parents having not much money, and you being able to go off to camp, and coming home with a mentor that will guide you through your education next year, like a tutor, who will spend time talking with you about how you can make more of yourself, and really getting into your life with you? Wow. I would love that.
NEway, here's another site about technology and girls, enjoy!
http://www.girlsgotech.org/
1 comment:
I saw this interesting book the other day at my favourite used book store. It discusses the Biology of boys and girls and how it needs to be taken into account for their development. I thought about picking it up. Almost did too. An interesting fact that I didn't know before -- girls, females, have way better hearing than boys, males, in general. They will tend to hear better in class -- which would put them at an advantage if they weren't so distracted. The gist of the book is that the differences need to be taken into account -- but us, we, society, need to aware of those differences. Males and females aren't the same -- both are capable -- but the differences needs to be accounted for so that both can make the most of themselves. Unfortunately, we know more about males than females, and we assume that what applies to males naturally applies to females. How f^)ked is that?
Post a Comment