I get tired.
I get tired of technology!
Today I created surveys for the 6 tech girls we are interviewing. Nathalie emailed me the amazing waiver she made, I downloaded it, saved it, signed into our girlhoods group email account we made, attached the two files, and sent them off! Nat and I talk back and forth about project ideas on google chat, and I text Whitney once in a while.
But is doesn't end there!
Nat and I met to discuss a quick meeting I had with our professor. We have to define technology! That is a much more involved task than it sounds like, but we must narrow our scope, and so we shall. We assigned tasks to be completed for tomorrow too. We feel the pressure of our Wednesday presentation looming.
Nat will rework the waiver, finish her intro to the project and apply some of our feminist analysis learned in WS 329 Re-Thinking Girlhoods, and edit her profile as a contributor.
I will edit the questionnaires remembering to be specific, learn how to put tabs at the top of the blog so that we can post into the assorted categories the learning journal requires, post a film, and start making posts that include the course readings we found relevant to this project.
Whitney is going to edit her profile too, start posting the outside research she did, and make sure to include reference to course readings.
We meet tomorrow night, Tuesday at 5:30 pm to go over what we have accomplished. We will organize our presentation for Wednesday and discuss anything we need to tweek on the blog.
Wow, this blog is looking really good! Great work Girls!
Girl Power 3.0 Empowered by girls who touch the buttons, supporting girls who want to learn!
Monday, November 28, 2011
WELCOME TO GIRL POWER 3.0... Here's how we came to be.
Welcome to our blog!! We are so excited to have you joining us!!
We, Erin, Whitney, and Nathalie, are undergraduate Women's Studies students at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, BC, Canada. We met in an upper level wostud's course called Rethinking Girlhoods, designed by our brilliant and inspiring professor Dr. Jo-Anne Lee. The class introduced us to feminist Girl's and Girlhood Studies from an intersectional, anti-racist, decolonizing, transnational perspective. We learned about the geneology of Girlhood Studies, which is a relatively new field of study (circa 1990s), about the importance of taking a critical perspective on the knowledge produced about girls in the earlier days ( which tended to universalize experiences of white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle class girls as representative of all girls), about the ways neoliberlism and consumerism present a post-feminist notion of "girl power", about girls and media, about how girls bodies are regulated and medicalized, about how issues around girls represent larger moral /political concerns in our society, about girls and interenational development (very frightening stuff), and so much more. For our group project part of the class, we were given creative freedom to synthesize our new knowledge and also engaged girls in producing new knowledge.
We initially had a project that involved meeting with a group of young moms and doing some culture jamming stuff in response to the negative representations of teen moms in popular culture , but unfortunately, the adults in control of the group decided we should not talk to them. Although we were disappointed, we were not surprised because we had been learning about how girls voices are often silenced by adults who think they are protecting them, doing the "right thing". We started analyzing the situation. It struck us that if girls have access to technologies that allow them to produce their own self-representations and the skills to use such technologies, they don't need to be given permission by adults to have their voices heard. They can become cultural agents and produce their own knowledge, unfiltered and unapologetic. We remembered back to a section of our class where we learned about girls and media production, how cultural messages that promote technology as a "boy thing" often prevent girls from learning the skills to share their voices publicly through the use of technology, and how empowering it is for girls to produce their own media. We learned that "as girls begin to create their own images and generate narrative that truly reflect their lives and concerns, they have the opportunity to take hold of the stereotypes of girlhood learn, disrupt or deliberately deconstruct them, and offer something else instead" (Lipkin, 2004 p.147).
We recognized how important this is, and were all really keen to produce knowledge and disrupt the 'girl' stereotypes that we had learned about. We wanted to create our own narratives , our own stories, but how? We needed the very technological skills that we lacked in order to produce media and alternative messages. Bingo!! This would be our project -- learning the technological skills required to communicate publicly from a self-identified 'girl' identity and then doing it!! We started talking within our group. Nathalie had recently learned how to make films, Erin had recently learned how to blog, and Whitney wanted to learn both. Given the time limits, we agreed it made the most sense to work collaboratively on making a blog about girls, technology, and culture. Our goal is to subvert popular stereotypes that tell us girls and technology don't mix by learning new technological skills ourselves and supporting other girls to do the same. Only couple weeks ago some of us believed we didn't have the ability to create and maintain a blog, and now here we are doing it and loving it!!
However, we recognize that we are very lucky in our access to computers, internet, and cameras available through UVic. We are able to learn these skills because we are surrounded with costly equipment that we can use freely as part of our university program, and this is something not all girls are able to do. However, even without all this equipment, blogging is something you can do at an internet cafe, or on school computers, and in our increasingly technological world, it is imperative that girls are encouraged to seek out technological skills so they too can speak publicly. We need to hear girls voices. We don't need adults regulating them. We as girls need the technological skills the produce and disseminate our own knowledge freely. We also need to encourage each other that we are capable, that technology is not some "dorky" "boyish" thing, but that it is a political tool that we can use to get our voices heard.
Our blog is a space to track our learning and research, share information and skills, and engage with girls from all around the world about our relationships with technology. We hope you enjoy your time here and share your comments with us!!
We're sick of postfeminist notions of 'Girl Power' that are all about shopping and sex appeal. So we present Girl Power 3.0 ... we're pushing buttons, we're speaking out, and we're not asking for permission.
We, Erin, Whitney, and Nathalie, are undergraduate Women's Studies students at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, BC, Canada. We met in an upper level wostud's course called Rethinking Girlhoods, designed by our brilliant and inspiring professor Dr. Jo-Anne Lee. The class introduced us to feminist Girl's and Girlhood Studies from an intersectional, anti-racist, decolonizing, transnational perspective. We learned about the geneology of Girlhood Studies, which is a relatively new field of study (circa 1990s), about the importance of taking a critical perspective on the knowledge produced about girls in the earlier days ( which tended to universalize experiences of white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle class girls as representative of all girls), about the ways neoliberlism and consumerism present a post-feminist notion of "girl power", about girls and media, about how girls bodies are regulated and medicalized, about how issues around girls represent larger moral /political concerns in our society, about girls and interenational development (very frightening stuff), and so much more. For our group project part of the class, we were given creative freedom to synthesize our new knowledge and also engaged girls in producing new knowledge.
We initially had a project that involved meeting with a group of young moms and doing some culture jamming stuff in response to the negative representations of teen moms in popular culture , but unfortunately, the adults in control of the group decided we should not talk to them. Although we were disappointed, we were not surprised because we had been learning about how girls voices are often silenced by adults who think they are protecting them, doing the "right thing". We started analyzing the situation. It struck us that if girls have access to technologies that allow them to produce their own self-representations and the skills to use such technologies, they don't need to be given permission by adults to have their voices heard. They can become cultural agents and produce their own knowledge, unfiltered and unapologetic. We remembered back to a section of our class where we learned about girls and media production, how cultural messages that promote technology as a "boy thing" often prevent girls from learning the skills to share their voices publicly through the use of technology, and how empowering it is for girls to produce their own media. We learned that "as girls begin to create their own images and generate narrative that truly reflect their lives and concerns, they have the opportunity to take hold of the stereotypes of girlhood learn, disrupt or deliberately deconstruct them, and offer something else instead" (Lipkin, 2004 p.147).
We recognized how important this is, and were all really keen to produce knowledge and disrupt the 'girl' stereotypes that we had learned about. We wanted to create our own narratives , our own stories, but how? We needed the very technological skills that we lacked in order to produce media and alternative messages. Bingo!! This would be our project -- learning the technological skills required to communicate publicly from a self-identified 'girl' identity and then doing it!! We started talking within our group. Nathalie had recently learned how to make films, Erin had recently learned how to blog, and Whitney wanted to learn both. Given the time limits, we agreed it made the most sense to work collaboratively on making a blog about girls, technology, and culture. Our goal is to subvert popular stereotypes that tell us girls and technology don't mix by learning new technological skills ourselves and supporting other girls to do the same. Only couple weeks ago some of us believed we didn't have the ability to create and maintain a blog, and now here we are doing it and loving it!!
However, we recognize that we are very lucky in our access to computers, internet, and cameras available through UVic. We are able to learn these skills because we are surrounded with costly equipment that we can use freely as part of our university program, and this is something not all girls are able to do. However, even without all this equipment, blogging is something you can do at an internet cafe, or on school computers, and in our increasingly technological world, it is imperative that girls are encouraged to seek out technological skills so they too can speak publicly. We need to hear girls voices. We don't need adults regulating them. We as girls need the technological skills the produce and disseminate our own knowledge freely. We also need to encourage each other that we are capable, that technology is not some "dorky" "boyish" thing, but that it is a political tool that we can use to get our voices heard.
Our blog is a space to track our learning and research, share information and skills, and engage with girls from all around the world about our relationships with technology. We hope you enjoy your time here and share your comments with us!!
We're sick of postfeminist notions of 'Girl Power' that are all about shopping and sex appeal. So we present Girl Power 3.0 ... we're pushing buttons, we're speaking out, and we're not asking for permission.
Technology Defined!
The word of technology is so broad. We defined the term earlier in the blog but I wanted to share my thoughts on the word. In the context of today……..I posted the question “Girls, what is your relationship with technology?” on Facebook and I got mixed bag of responses, but most referred to their cellphones, or Skype, or computers. But when I think critically about it, technology can be anything, according to the Encarta World Dictionary (1999) it is defined as:
tech·nol·o·gy n
1. The study, development, and application of devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes
2. The sum of a society’s or culture’s practical knowledge, especially with reference to its material culture
Technology can be anything from your blender to web design. However, for the purposes of this blog, we aim to interrogate girls’ involvement in production technology. This is technology that is used to produce something for public access, to communicate something, to express opinions, to pubically produce! We focus on a few main forms of production technology, this entails:
*Music production and DJing.
*Film, Photography and Videography
*Production of Public internet sites, such as blogs and webpages.
We want to see how girls interact with these forms of technology because it is in these forms where the great power of resisting and expressing ideas to the public exists. It is with this power that girls are recognized, girl activity switches from bedroom culture to public access. It is with these technologies that the girls’ voices, which were once missing in public discourse are now made loud.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Girls in a Tech World
Quote from the above movie: "If we don't have women designing the products we use, then it's just going to turn into boys toys that has nothing to do with anything we care about."
This quote draws on Kearny's concept of the "girl gaze" (Lipkin, 2009, p.p. 152-153). Using a girl gaze, instead of a male gaze, challenges the hegemonic power relations around production and consumption. It allows girls to create products for girls that resist the temptation of reproducing products that support normative and hetero-normative values, that are normally produced by males for female consumption. These girls in this short clip utilize this girl gaze, and our version of girl power re-vamped (girl power 3.0) to create technological products for girls, by girls in a male-dominated technological world.
Guess What... I'm BLOGGGING!!!!!!!!!!
When Erin offered to teach us how to blog, I was both excited and a bit nervous. I once had my own blog (on street style in Victoria), but I had NO idea how to navigate it or make it fancy / cool, and although it became quite popular, and a couple guys signed on, and took it over and basically kicked me off because I was unable to keep up, which has left a sour taste in my mouth about the whole blogging thing...
I've talked with friends before about starting a blog, there are so many things worth talking about publicly, however my insecurities around computer 'stuff' has always prevented me from doing anything besides think / talk about it. But now, here I am, blogging!! Our learning session with Erin was so wonderful, so easy, so much fun!! It's amazing how easy technology can be when its explained in comfortable environment. We learned all the basics, and then got into the 'gadgets' which add some jazz to the plain page. I went home after our session and played around, pushed buttons, screwed up, fixed my mistakes, and within hours I knew what I was doing. So now, just like that I have the skills and abilities to share my voice on the world wide interweb! It's pretty cool, and way more empowering than I thought it would be.
Only a couple weeks ago I was looking at a friend's blog and wishing that I was able to do something like that, but then telling myself it would take too long, be too expensive to learn, be too complicated, but really, it's so easy.
So thanks Erin for pushing me into the realm of cyberspace... I feel strangely at home here, sending my thoughts into the ether... I might just get used to this ;)
I've talked with friends before about starting a blog, there are so many things worth talking about publicly, however my insecurities around computer 'stuff' has always prevented me from doing anything besides think / talk about it. But now, here I am, blogging!! Our learning session with Erin was so wonderful, so easy, so much fun!! It's amazing how easy technology can be when its explained in comfortable environment. We learned all the basics, and then got into the 'gadgets' which add some jazz to the plain page. I went home after our session and played around, pushed buttons, screwed up, fixed my mistakes, and within hours I knew what I was doing. So now, just like that I have the skills and abilities to share my voice on the world wide interweb! It's pretty cool, and way more empowering than I thought it would be.
Only a couple weeks ago I was looking at a friend's blog and wishing that I was able to do something like that, but then telling myself it would take too long, be too expensive to learn, be too complicated, but really, it's so easy.
So thanks Erin for pushing me into the realm of cyberspace... I feel strangely at home here, sending my thoughts into the ether... I might just get used to this ;)
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Journal #4: After learning how to blog….
I am so grateful to Erin for this new skill! It’s amazing, being able to explore my thoughts and express myself and post it online for everyone to see. Someone from Germany and Japan looked at our blog! So cool. And anyone can do it, you can learn how to blog in minutes and make your voice heard. I love this, and I think everyone who wants to learn should be allowed the space, especially girls.
Member Meeting
What we have been up to....
Last night we all met to work on our project! The goal was to introduce the girl to the world of blogging. I feel this was an important experience for us all- girls learning from girls!
 |
| Nathalie learning how to start a blog, and mastering it in minutes! |
Timeline
5pm -7pm: We took pictures and edited them, made facebook interview questions, wrote a reflection response, made an email address for our group-which is the first step of creating a blog
Then we ate dinner all together!
7:30-10:30: We brainstormed interviewquestions, created the blog, learned how to post and how to design ablog, shared our research, discussed what we found in the readings to apply to our project, planned our next meeting and set out tasks to be completed
Goals-
We will have interview questions to email to our 5 participants by Sunday
Nat will write the introduction to explain what our blog/project is about
We will post our reflections
Whitneyresearches blogs to link to
Erin uses quotes from readings for posts that each member then can comment on
Narrow our subject by defining technology further
Fill out our individual contributor profiles
Meet on Monday!
Words of Wisdom from Li'l Azúcar, 13
"It's important for girls to learn how to DJ because it's a fun hobby and it's fun to learn. It also proves girls can do the same things guys do. I learned how to skip beats, set up the turntables, and mix music together. I learned that old music can sound better than new music. My friends are proud and they all want to try. Plus they want me to do parties. DJing is harder than I thought it would be because I have to set it up just right or it won't sound good. I would tell girls do not give up on it (DJing) even if it's not something you want to do, because in the end, you're going to have fun."--Li'l Azúcar, Gemini, 13 years old
Research Study on Girls and Technology
Kekelis et al. conducted a research study to engage a group of 126 girls aged 11 to 19 from a range of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds to investigate why girls interested in technology do not choose to go on in a career in advanced technology. They designed an after-school program, called “Techbridge”, which taught and engaged girls in software engineering, robot making and other avenues of technology, and they formed focus groups to give the girls a space to discuss their relationships with technology. The researchers found three main hurdles girls face when considered pursuing a career in technology:
1) Negative Stereotypes about Computing Jobs
2) A Disconnect between Dreams and Plans
3) Lack of Career Guidance and Support from Family
Application to Girl Power:
Many girls are told by their parents and schools to graduate, go to college or university and to keep their options open and try many things in post-secondary education. Girls are told they can be anything, do anything, and as a result change the world, hence giving them a false sense of power. However, this open-minded guidance has made it hard for girls to focus in on a career, especially technology careers, and it leaves them unaware of the future challenges, barriers, and work required by the careers. Many girls set their minds on a dream career, singing, acting, web designer, or world class D.J., but have no idea of the high school courses, resources and skills needed to get into these vocations. How then, do we get girls to harness the true power of engaging technology and participate in positive prosumption?
Kekelis, L.S., Ancheta, R.W.. & Heber, E. (2005). Hurdles in the pipeline:
Friday, November 25, 2011
Journal #3: Pa Pa Pa Power!
I think the girl who knows technology has access to the greatest girl power of all, the power not only to consume and deconstruct media, but to combat popular media with new, alternative media! It’s a marriage of consumption and production! Also known as PROSUMPTION! Proactive, positive ways of consuming to produce, and producing for others to consume positive messages. You go girls, GIRL POWER REDEEMED!!
The Gendered Dialectic of Technology
So much analyzing media and so little producing it. This is a common theme in feminist studies; we critique, critique, critique, but don't offer an alternative. And why not? Perhaps its because we don't have the technological skills to do so... Many of us girls were never encouraged to learn media technologies, because it's not a "girl thing". So we're left overflowing with ideas, yet lacking the ability to disseminate them. It's interesting our that production technology, our communication and media technology, is largely dominated by men. Generally speaking, girls and women lack the technological skills, knowledge and perhaps even motivation to produce media and communicate publically. Why? Is it because girls and technology actually don't mix? Because they don't have anything to say? Or is that a master narrative in our society, a story that is told over and over, that permeates our institutions and discourses in such a way that it appears natural, inherent...? I argue it is the latter.
I am beginning to realize that this lack of technological skills and abilities in girls and women is part of what Luce Irigaray calls a phallogocentric economy, an economy of castration, an economy of lack. By this she means that women are signified, defined, by what they lack in relation to men. It is women's lack of a penis, lack of "rational thinking", lack of "production skills", lack of "power" that defines her. Men's power and higher social status is dependent, is contingent on what women lack. So to bring it all back together, the master narrative that girls and technology don't mix is a cultural story that keeps girls and women locked into a position of inferiority, of naturalized lack.
But, just like Hegel's master / slave relationship, men's supposed natural technological abilities are in a dialectical relationship with women's supposed natural inabilities. What happens if girls and women start touching the buttons, crossing the wires... ?? That's what we want to do here... we want to empower each other to master the skills many of us have long believed and accepted as purely boys and men's domain.
I am beginning to realize that this lack of technological skills and abilities in girls and women is part of what Luce Irigaray calls a phallogocentric economy, an economy of castration, an economy of lack. By this she means that women are signified, defined, by what they lack in relation to men. It is women's lack of a penis, lack of "rational thinking", lack of "production skills", lack of "power" that defines her. Men's power and higher social status is dependent, is contingent on what women lack. So to bring it all back together, the master narrative that girls and technology don't mix is a cultural story that keeps girls and women locked into a position of inferiority, of naturalized lack.
But, just like Hegel's master / slave relationship, men's supposed natural technological abilities are in a dialectical relationship with women's supposed natural inabilities. What happens if girls and women start touching the buttons, crossing the wires... ?? That's what we want to do here... we want to empower each other to master the skills many of us have long believed and accepted as purely boys and men's domain.
Why are there no female DJs on DJ Mag's top 100 list?
This article was posted October 28, 2011 by Hanna Hanra on The Guardian's music blog.
As a female DJ I've had guys telling me how to use the decks and even changing the speed of my records for me – so perhaps it's no surprise we've been left out of a list of the best DJs ...
Head-in-hands moment … not even BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac made DJ Mag's top 100 list. Photograph: BBC
Clicking through DJ Mag's newly published list of top 100 DJs, it's easy to spot the one thing missing: women. Revered in the clubbing industry as the "black book" for DJs, producers and promoters, the list is voted for by the public every year. Between 2007 and 2011 just one girl, Claudia Cazacu, scraped on to the list, charting at number 93 in 2010. Not even Annie Mac – who hosts three shows on Radio 1, DJs regularly at Fabric and whose Annie Mac Presents mixtape is No 1 in the electronic charts – gets a look in. It's clearly a bone of contention with some women in the business – Peaches, the Berlin DJ/producer posted "DJ MAG! Your Top 100 DJ boy club list can eat a dick! Where the ladies at???" on her Facebook page in a fit of frustration after the list was published.
For the last 10 years, my main source of income has been from DJing. It's taken me around the world, from dive bars in Krakow where the kids went wild when I played Nirvana to glitzy fashion parties in New York where Grace Jones serenaded me with Pull Up to the Bumper wearing only a headdress as I stood in the DJ booth (which was, incidentally, disguised as a tiki hut). I thought, based on my experiences so far, that it could be an exciting career. I've DJ'd in the coolest clubs and the shittest pubs, I've played at a record-breaking 13 parties during a four-day period one London fashion week and I've been flown across the world to play 10 songs at a party. I lost count of the number of mornings I've spent trying to get tequila off my CDs. But just at the point where my parents finally began to understand exactly what it was I did for a living, it became harder to break through into top-billing territory. I hit the glass ceiling. I always thought that term applied to women in skirt suits in big, windowed office blocks – not those whose working day starts at 11pm and involves sticky floors and a disco ball.
I realised that it didn't matter how many times a week I DJ'd or how much I charged or how much people loved what I played, I was losing the impetus to fight my way through the boys' club and try and make it to the top. And if I got there, would the fight to stay there be worth it? Annie Mac, who is one of the handful of really successful female DJs, admits that she might not have made it without her radio show. "I had a profile through that and got gigs through that," she said in a recent interview.
Boys aren't better at DJing than girls. We don't DJ with our vaginas. But the fact is, in my experience, they clearly think they are and do make it more difficult for us. I've had male DJs reach over as I mixed two tracks and start twiddling with the knobs. Or come and stand behind me and instruct me on what to do. My personal favourite was when, at a regular Sunday nightclub, the male DJ who played after me reached over the sound desk and start to change the speed of a track for me. Did he think I had sped the track up slightly on accident? Another brilliantly sexist moment was when a DJ span round and said to me bluntly, "Well, boys just know more about music, don't they." And it's not just the other DJs – there are the soundmen too, who persistently ask me if I know what I'm doing. You know, after 10 years, I'm still not sure.
I guess maybe the whole unbalance is something to do with the fact that it's only in the past 5 years that most venues have acquired CD decks, so you no longer have to play from vinyl, which is heavy to carry. Maybe that's why there are so many more men at the top. They're better at carrying heavy things.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/oct/28/female-dj-mag-top-100
For the last 10 years, my main source of income has been from DJing. It's taken me around the world, from dive bars in Krakow where the kids went wild when I played Nirvana to glitzy fashion parties in New York where Grace Jones serenaded me with Pull Up to the Bumper wearing only a headdress as I stood in the DJ booth (which was, incidentally, disguised as a tiki hut). I thought, based on my experiences so far, that it could be an exciting career. I've DJ'd in the coolest clubs and the shittest pubs, I've played at a record-breaking 13 parties during a four-day period one London fashion week and I've been flown across the world to play 10 songs at a party. I lost count of the number of mornings I've spent trying to get tequila off my CDs. But just at the point where my parents finally began to understand exactly what it was I did for a living, it became harder to break through into top-billing territory. I hit the glass ceiling. I always thought that term applied to women in skirt suits in big, windowed office blocks – not those whose working day starts at 11pm and involves sticky floors and a disco ball.
I realised that it didn't matter how many times a week I DJ'd or how much I charged or how much people loved what I played, I was losing the impetus to fight my way through the boys' club and try and make it to the top. And if I got there, would the fight to stay there be worth it? Annie Mac, who is one of the handful of really successful female DJs, admits that she might not have made it without her radio show. "I had a profile through that and got gigs through that," she said in a recent interview.
Boys aren't better at DJing than girls. We don't DJ with our vaginas. But the fact is, in my experience, they clearly think they are and do make it more difficult for us. I've had male DJs reach over as I mixed two tracks and start twiddling with the knobs. Or come and stand behind me and instruct me on what to do. My personal favourite was when, at a regular Sunday nightclub, the male DJ who played after me reached over the sound desk and start to change the speed of a track for me. Did he think I had sped the track up slightly on accident? Another brilliantly sexist moment was when a DJ span round and said to me bluntly, "Well, boys just know more about music, don't they." And it's not just the other DJs – there are the soundmen too, who persistently ask me if I know what I'm doing. You know, after 10 years, I'm still not sure.
I guess maybe the whole unbalance is something to do with the fact that it's only in the past 5 years that most venues have acquired CD decks, so you no longer have to play from vinyl, which is heavy to carry. Maybe that's why there are so many more men at the top. They're better at carrying heavy things.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/oct/28/female-dj-mag-top-100
Has technology become the new "Boys' Club" ?
This study is a decade old, but still very interesting...
The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) study, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children documents a diminishing gender gap in achievement in mathematics and science, with one exception -- technology. The study concludes, "While girls have narrowed the gender gaps in math and science, technology has become the new 'boys' club.'"
Only 17% of the high school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test in 1997 were females - the lowest percentage of all tests given. AB Calculus is up to 47%, Chemistry is 42%, Biology is 56%, and Physics, although still dismal, is over 20%. Complete data was published by the College Board.
The AAUW study also concludes
The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) study, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children documents a diminishing gender gap in achievement in mathematics and science, with one exception -- technology. The study concludes, "While girls have narrowed the gender gaps in math and science, technology has become the new 'boys' club.'"
Only 17% of the high school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test in 1997 were females - the lowest percentage of all tests given. AB Calculus is up to 47%, Chemistry is 42%, Biology is 56%, and Physics, although still dismal, is over 20%. Complete data was published by the College Board.
The AAUW study also concludes
- Girls are significantly more likely than boys to enroll in clerical and data-entry classes, the 1990s version of typing. Boys are more likely to enroll in advanced computer science and graphics courses.
- School software programs often reinforce gender bias and stereotypical gender roles.
- Girls consistently rate themselves significantly lower than boys on computer ability, and boys exhibit higher self-confidence and a more positive attitude about computers than do girls.
- Girls use computers less often outside of school. Boys enter the classroom with more prior experience with computers and other technology than girls.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Journal #2: My middle name: Technical Difficulty
Why has “technological difficulty” become a key word in my vocabulary? Erin sent me a link to a practice blog she created to get us started and I couldn’t open it. I eventually figured it out, but after much frustration. This is going to be a long road. My laptop, his name is Archibald, has been blue-screening and doing funky things on me lately so this should be fun.
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