Getting girls into IT/Pia's Group

About this page

These are notes on Getting girls into IT from a group at linux.conf.au 2009.

Hey You

Keep editing this page! We spent so much time talking of ideas that we didn't get around to the personal stories bit. :)

Who's who

Pia's group included:

(PLEASE EDIT YOUR DETAILS IF I MISHEARD OR MADE A HORRIBLE TYPO)

Alyssa - a law student and intereted in tommorrow's legal stuff. Not really into tech, more open source tech.

Dora: Legal background too - Aust Digital Alliance, copyright stuff

nancy - is involved with Genderchangers.org - Women's skillsharing and open source connective stuff. Eclectic tech. Is speaking on Wednesday!

Jason - Interested in among other things, human rights, gender equality, sociopolitical issues. Involved in Linux and FLOSS. Is a law school graduate.

Raena - Technical editor at SitePoint.com publishing techie books. Recently escaped corporate software world! :)

Pia - spends half her life on OLPC, also trying to set up an OSS competency centre (training).

Kathrine - Doesn't get software. ;) Helps Robyn with ComputerShare. Gives them out to people in need. Plays WOW. Has helped others fix their computers. (Give yourself more credit Kath, you are kicking booty! :D)

Robyn is a teacher - teachers raw beginners in IT. Teaches women who are scared of computers, nurses who are scared of losing their jobs through not knowing, mums who are petrified of their husbands or children telling them to NOT TOUCH IT! A course involved a strip-n-build at a womens health centre and was floated as positive mental health.

Pascal - comes from a design background - a graphic and web designer. "Most of the other topics are way too hardcore for me."

Ideas and Issues

• Ada Lovelace Day
• Software Freedom Day
• BarCamps
• International Women's Day, March 8th
• eWaste workshops
• Training -- for older girls, this usually needs a point, a goal or a specific focus to help women see the relevance to their career/education
  • Make a short film
  • Use your digital camera
  • Make a podcast. (What kid hasn't grabbed a tape recorder and recorded themselves? It's way fun)
  • Design your own ringtone or phone widgets
  • Blogging! There are already situations where this happens.
  • Slippery slope to programming -- eg. automation of something. teach kids how to automate and they will naturally become better at finding empowering ways to solve everyday problems.
• OLPC
  • eg, encourage older girls writing something for younger girls, or eg use Scratch for a new app to help girls handle credit cards.
• The image of what people do in the area needs some stuff
  • For example, ways to show *why* people do things for the open source community, for social reasons. Profile the reasons why people get into IT.
  • This is a good add-on for any event - once people are there, we can show them how motivating it is and give them ways to find out how that happens.
• Standardised online education! Things work better with a completed course (cf. Web Standards Curriculum)

Share

• Make your notes available to everyone to share so we can use them in our own thing :D
• Write up your experiences too.
  • Stuart (spelling) Rushton could give some good advice on his experiences using FLOSS in the school.

Promote this!

• Careers Days. Be excellent role models.
• Make a Planet of girls' and women's events. And/or make better use of the LinuxChix Planet.
• Visit schools?
  • How can this be framed in a way that generates interest?
  • How can primary school teachers, who often have no specific IT skills, get our help?

• Digital Economy Future Directions (to be clarified) that DBCDE does. It looks at ways to include the digital economy into Australia and talks about helping teachers.