women and girls in science, technology, engineering + math :: stemming (.org)

DARPA – The “agency of wonder” is now headed by a woman. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/13prof.html?hpw

Welcome, new members/readers! Don’t forget that you can learn more about how to use the site by browsing the administrivia category of posts — and that if you have any questions or suggestions, you can get in touch with me at clara@stemming.org.

• There are four women in space right now, which is the most women that have ever been in space at one time. (See also: howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com)

• Teen Skepchick posts a satirical ten step guide to intellectual discussion in high school

• Gail Carmichael recaps her successful Carleton Celebration of

Hi everyone,

I’m very excited to have joined stemming.org!! I’m one of the founders and developers of Qimo4Kids, a Linux distribution for young children, to encourage early learning through technology. I’m very interested in what’s going on here, and excited to see how I can contribute and participate!

I’m looking forward to spending time learning!

MichelleQ

I’m spending a few days at my parents’ microfarm this week, so just a few links before I go back outside to play with chickens in this beautiful weather:

• The NIH has released some free “Women are Scientists” videos profiling successful female scientists

• A Skepchick reader blogs about his experience seeing a young woman gain interest and skills in science thanks in part to strong female role models in the lab

• The ACM posts about intelligent tutoring systems that could change their strategies based on a student’s mood

(read more...)

• Jennifer Hunt, a researcher at McGill, has crunched some numbers on women leaving engineering and finds that most of those who leave are dissatisfied with their pay and promotion opportunities, and that the more male-dominated the field in general, the higher the rate at which women leave it. The paper is behind a paywall/accessible to university subscribers; there’s also a writeup in Time and a discussion at the Freakonomics blog.

• There are a few days left for students to apply to the Google Summer of Code; Geek Feminism has collected a few

Workshop: Paintable Electronics Workshop

http://events.mit.edu/event.html?id=11609572&date=2010/04/02

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Time: 10:00a–5:00p

Location: N51

Open a book to make it glow, draw a sketch to create music, touch a pop-up book to make it move. This workshop (presented by researchers from MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech group) will teach you how to create interactive paintings and paper sculptures that sparkle, change shape, and sing. We’ll spend the day exploring the intersection of paper crafts, and electronics using paper, conductive paints, traditional paints, ribbons, beads, lights, speakers, and glue. No previous experience required. Lunch included with registration fee.

For teens (ages 15+) (read more...)

I have a sister who is 12. She loves her math and science classes, but her school doesn’t seem to be interested in teaching computer skills (not even typing – I bought her some typing programs to get her started when I found that out).

I love computers and I love programming because of the limitless applications and ways to help people. My enthusiasm has yet to convince her that programming is something she’d be interested in, though. I’ve tested the programming waters with her on a few occasions using Python, but she is quickly bored by the need to (read more...)

• If I were to link you to all the awesome Ada Lovelace Day posts that came out this week, we’d be here all day. Fortunately there’s already a list for your browsing pleasure! Obviously more than enough to read, but hopefully you’ll find something about a technical woman you didn’t know about or whose contributions were/are bigger than you realized.

• Geek Feminism posts about how NOT to observe Ada Lovelace Day; the purpose of the day is to increase the visibility of women in science and technology, and they call out some posts that don’t

Happy Ada Lovelace Day — an international day of blogging about women in science and technology! Some of my technical & scientific heroines are the women of Stemming — below, a few women who agreed to be profiled today.

Emma (Emma Staatz) is studying to be a doctor specializing in public health — after getting degrees in English and theater in college, she took the initiative to take science courses and EMT training on her own in preparation for a medical career (even though, as she says, “there is a sad lack of costumes in science”). She loves (read more...)

This weekend was the LibrePlanet conference here in Cambridge — the Free Software Foundation‘s yearly gathering. (For those new to the idea of free software, here’s a little background — some people use the terms “free software” and “open-source software” interchangeably, but they have different connotations.)

Women are underrepresented in STEM in general; they tend to be even more underrepresented in computing (women make up about 20% of programmers); but in FOSS (free and open-source software) women are only 2% of contributors. There are lots of potential reasons for this: free software is mostly driven by (read more...)