Additional profile information on Alfred Thompson at Google+
DigiGirlz is an outreach program run by people at Microsoft who are specifically interested in getting more young women interested in Information Technology. Recently the New England Cable News channel reported on a DigiGirlz event at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham Massachusetts. BTW not all of Microsoft's US operations are in Washington State. Microsoft has some 900 employees in Massachusetts and more around New England.
It is estimated that by 2010, 77% of U.S. jobs will require I.T. knowledge and yet only 5% of U.S. undergraduates are following IT degrees. There are about 42% of the undergraduates in China and India going after IT degrees. Is it any wonder we're seeing more and more companies being forced to hire from overseas?
Programs like DigiGirlz are a chance to change the perception of IT as a "boy thing" and to show young women what opportunities are there. View the video here and if you are interested in what sort of jobs a company like Microsoft has (about 8,000 open jobs right now) take a look at our careers site where you can search by location or type of job.
And for more on DigiGirlz, my friend Diane is at a DigiGirlz event in New York today. She has information about other places the program is going on her blog. Apparently they are happening all over the country.
This actually came out Monday but MSR and Carnegie Mellon announced the new Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking. The part of this announcement that excites me is this sentence "In addition, the center will develop and disseminate courses and curricula suitable for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as K–12 classes." [Emphasis mine]
The TechApprentice Program is a seven-week internship program for high school seniors and juniors in Boston and the Metro Boston area. It is a a great program and they are looking for more Boston area companies to get involved. This is a great opportunity to get some bright motivated student into a company and to help contribute towards "feeding the pipeline."
The Microsoft Robotics Studio team just opened a bunch of online forums for discussion different aspects of their program.
Well the Canadian Academic Team are at it again. They've just opened a new site to help people create their own Game Camps. Or you can go there and find out about new Game Camps as they become scheduled. The site is called the Develop Mental Institute and it is an interesting looking site to say the least.
Game Camp is a workshop that is organized by volunteers who have information and ideas about programming games that they want to share. At the Develop Mental Institute site you will find content, tools and other resources to help create and run your own Game Camp.
The Develop Mental Institute is a virtual building where you can find out about planned Game Camps, find free resources for leading your own Game Camp, and interact with a rather interesting web site.
Oh and besides information about Game Camp, the site has tons of hidden features and games. Every element of the website is related to a famous game in history. Try to find them all!
They keep doing fun stuff like this in Canada and I may have to move north. Oh yeah the resources are available to people outside of Canada as well.