Getting girls into IT/Sara's Group

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

Private girls schools are better resourced, and most female students studying IT and CS come from girls only schools.
Teachers and careers advisors can be discouraging, sometimes because they don't understand the technology
Teachers teaching subjects that aren't computing studies, science or IT don't have access to computer labs and projectors, even though they'd love to use computers in class
Teachers aren't savvy
IT departments in schools are often minimum wage positions, and not very good.
Some teachers don't think that girls should be doing Engineering: "What's a nice girl like you doing in Engineering?"
Students actively discouraged from being creative with computers and learning about them.

Talk to teachers of all subjects, history teachers included
Talk to teachers associations
Teachers have to do 'professional development', use this as an opportunity to talk to them
Fit your agenda into the 'core curriculum' requirements
Show teachers that they can improve their 'learning outcomes' your way
Educate them in bite-sized chunks. Have lunchtime meetups which are cross-curriculum.

Invite kids to do their year 10 work experience at your workplace
Computer Bank for schools: they'll learn how computers work and they'll have computers to use!
Community based activities for girls: e.g. introduce them to Computer Bank so they can do volunteer work
University run summer schools for girls (girls in engineering summer school @ UoW, Siemens' Summer school, etc)