On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Laurel Fan wrote:
> It seems to me that the approach most of those
> get-girls-to-like-technology programs seems to be very oriented towards
> industry, ie they say "Look, computers are a good career, you can make
> lots of money"; they promote technology as work, not fun. I'm not sure
> this works.
Well, it might; in a society where money is power, if you promote
computers as the way to get money, and girls learn to work with
technology, then those females will advance in social status. But you're
right, the current approach is very industry-focused. What will that get
us? the 21st-century equivalent of secretaries--- low-level female geeks
who aren't pioneering anything.
> For example, one of the reasons cited in the article for
> fewer women in technology is that girls don't get as much exposure to
> computers in school. In my case, and it wasn't that long ago[1], most
> of my pre-college computer experience was outside of school. I could
> probably count the number of times I used a computer in school on one
> hand[2]. If computers are work, kids think work is boring, kids don't
> do work for fun, so they don't play with computers in their spare time.
*nod* could be. i know that when i was a geekling, it was mostly at home,
though i did trade warez for the Apple IIe with my fellow 6th-graders. ;)
and school was just a way to meet other budding geeks---- at least as far
as my technical development went. I learned other stuff, which became
useful in college---- but gradeschool and highschool weren't big
encouragers of my technical ability.
> Maybe it's just my point of view. Maybe it's because the only reason I
> have to get more girls into computers is that I'd think they'd have fun.
> Maybe it's just that people my age were children after computers were
> popular and before the internet was .com-ized.
i started with computers because they were fun. but i did get approval
from my teachers for the fact that i knew my way around a keyboard and
could program.
What I'm afraid of is that kids today are learning mostly user skills---
they don't seem to be learning programming as much at young ages as i did.
they're learning to operate windoze. Getting girls to use computers does
less good if all they're doing is learning to be 21st-century secretaries.
has anyone here seen "october sky"? i saw it on video the other night, and
i think it captures a lot of the flavor of what it's like to be a geek in
highschool in the US. the historical bits were different, but that
"look, i made it work!" or "dammit, why's it breaking?" or "why can't i be
cool like the other kids?" thing seemed right to me.
> On a completely different subject, what is a better, non-adversarial way
> of analyzing a design? The whole "you point out problems and I'll tell
> you why they're not" thing seems to work pretty well for me...
a design for what? software, a website, a network?
srl
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