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Received this from the CSTA Mailing list yesterday and thought it worth sharing. Do you know someone who is doing an outstanding job of mentoring or a mentoring program that is doing a great job with bringing underrepresented minorities into STEM fields? If so you may want to nominate them for the Presidential...

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology has opened nominations for the A. Richard Newton Educator Award to recognize educators who engage in new, innovative and successful practices and programs to attract more women and girls into STEM fields.  I really believe that finding, highlighting...

Years ago, when I was a student at Taylor University (in what is now the Taylor Computer Science and Engineering department)  there were more women in computer science than there are today. The women did as well as the men under what I would call some challenges. Specifically they had a curfew ...

Last Friday Microsoft NERD ( New England Research and Development Center ) was pleased to host DigiGirlz Day for close to 300 high school girls from around Massachusetts and New Hampshire. About DigiGirlz Day During the event, students interact with Microsoft employees and managers to gain exposure to...

I have to confess that I have not been doing a great job of keeping up with my blog reading lately.  I’ve been reading more books for pleasure lately. That’s been great in some respects but in others I feel like I am missing things. One post I almost missed was this one by Scott McLeod called Economically...

Passing along this announcement from the CSTA Blast announcement list. Computer science has a lot of opportunity to help differently abled people but to maximize the value need to think about including them in the process. In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the Computer Science...

Last Saturday I spend the day at Windham High School in Windham New Hampshire for the second annual NH TechFest . TechFest is a project created by parents and others interested in making sure that students are exposed to information about STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) careers in an interesting...

Calling all digital divas, web chix & coder girls! It’s time to start thinking about the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing . This is a great program which I have been proud to promote though this blog for several years now. These awards honor young women who are active and interested...

Fair warning: Some gross generalizations and exaggeration for emphasis follow. But some valid points I think. I wrote my first computer program over 35 years ago. There were more women in the field back then. Not as many as their were earlier in the history of computers though. Programming was a woman...

Computer Science teacher Pat Yongpradit   seems to be everywhere on the educational blogosphere lately. I posted about his 5-6 week XNA course curriculum last week. Vicki Davis ( @coolcatteacher ) posted an interview on her  Cool Cat Teacher Blog posted a video interview him - Attracting Girls...

As someone who is mildly addicted to statistics and who has a degree in Sociology (really) I found this article in Fast Company very interesting on several levels. LinkedIn Wants To Help You Name Your New Baby/CEO It reports on common first names for CEOs of global companies – both male and female. But...

Well it did mine. And Mark Guzdial ha a post last week in which he told two stories of young women taking his Media Computation course at Georgia Tech and how it changed the direction of their careers. (Read Impact of CS on female non-majors: Beyond a pipeline model ) While in my case,a poor confused...

Happy New Year! I hope your year is off to a good start. I know mine is. I’m very excited about the promise and potential of this year. Last year was  a very good one and the momentum continues. I was on vacation last week but that doesn’t mean I was off line. I guess I can’t stay away. So here...

Did you do anything special for Computer Science Education week last week? The one thing I did was to host a group of about 40 students from Easthampton (MA) high school at the Microsoft offices in Cambridge (MA). I talked a bit about careers in technology in general, jobs at Microsoft and took them...

We have this tendency to think that learning at school takes place only between the opening and closing bells of the “regular school day.” Oh we know about after school programs but there is a tendency to think of them as babysitting at worst and remediation at best. Occasionally we have the good sense...

FIRST, the people who bring us a whole range of robotics competitions and more, are once again hosting their annual FIRST Women in Science & Technology Forum . The people I have talked to who have attended or brought/sent young women have all raved about it. If you know high school girls who are...

What a week. On Friday I gave a keynote talk at the 1 6th Annual Technology and Learning Conference at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania. What a great time I had. The conference organizers were absolutely wonderful hosts and the talk itself seemed to be well received. I think they recorded...

I really like this award program so I am happy to promote it on my blog. The following is from the official announcement. I strongly encourage you to share this opportunity with high school women and with teachers who may be able to suggest it to their students. The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing...

You saw the title and a single number came to mind. If you are English speaking your probably thought “26.” If your native language is not English you may have thought of other numbers though. Even in European languages there are letters such as é è ö ᴂ å ø. And that is just the start. So what does this...

Happy Labor Day! Well here in the US anyway. Technically a public/work holiday and I do plan to spend most of it relaxing. Unless my wife has other plans that is. I spent yesterday doing some early fall yard work for example. But it looks good so it was worth it. I have spent some time collecting some...

Girls play games – computer games, video games, console games, online games – all kinds of games. Yet girls are not big into creating their own computer games. Why is that? A recent article in the Chicago Tribune ( Women missing from video game development work force ) says that: “According...

My first real knowledge of differently abled people using computers came about 35 years ago when I was in college. There was a recent graduate of the college who was seriously physically limited. He lived most of his life in an Iron Lung. he could not walk and his hand and arm strength was very limited...

What a week. My son was married a week ago. I picked him and his bride up from their honeymoon last night. In between I took a trip to Texas for a Microsoft conference and celebrated my birthday while away. At least my bride was with me and I was able to meet up with my brother and sister in law who...

Did you have a good Fourth of July weekend? Technically a holiday for me today as the real day come on the Sunday. I understand it was a bit of a holiday in Norway as well – Queen Sonja’s birthday. I was pretty busy at ISTE last week and then catching up on things a bit. Oh ok a lot. So not...

I pretty much took last week off from blogging. I sort of needed a break and since they were migrating this and many other blogs to a new updated blogging engine it seemed like a good time to step back from it for a while. I did still read blogs, follow Twitter and read a lot of email. So I do have some...