More math, particularly linear algebra
and
Computer science
They never take the CS, particularly the girls. They seem scared of it. There is a huge barrier of perception to over come.
This morning, NPR pretty much reported on the same thing, with stark gender and racial divides:
In Mississippi, Montana and Wyoming, no girls took the computer science exam.
In 11 states, no black students took it.
In eight states, no Hispanics took it.
In 17 states, fewer than 100 students took it
18% of the students that take the exam are women.
This last weekend, my daughter participated in a math contest representing her school. She had fun, but when she came home, she noted that all of the 16 finalists were all Asian boys. She asked about both aspects of that, and we discussed, that yes, while there are individual differences in abilities, when you see things skewed so radically the cause is likely due instead to exposure and priorities. She's becoming increasingly aware of these issues, and I'm glad she brings them up for discussion. She is bound and determined to make it so that there are no more than 15 boys on the stage next year.
But computer science? She shies away from most things having to do with a computer, and this bothers me. I use the skills and knowledge I learned in my AP computer science course more than 20 years ago. I use those skills daily.
The NPR report suggests that early exposure is the key. I’ve been trying to increase the amount of programming at home in a supportive manner to moderate success. Toys, games, and summer camps are all places where this can happen.
How many thousands of mathematically and logically talented girls are being turned away from these skills before they even have a chance to explore them?
If you personally don’t know what programming a computer entails, the underlying basis is to give the computer a sequence of instructions for the computer to execute. You can also have a computer make decisions, to execute an instruction or not based on whether or not a particular condition is met. The code itself is just the language you use to speak to the computer. As with languages spoken between people, there are a multitude of options, and learning a new language gets easier and easier the more you speak. The programming of the underlying logical statements remains the same. If you can learn the basics of the sequences logical instructions and decisions, then learning the language that goes on top is rather straight forward. So, how do we teach our kids, some leery of the computer already, the logical instructions of programming?
I'm a huge fan of board games:
For really little kids preorder Robot Turtles. I haven't seen it myself, but I knew the author in college, and I can be certain that it's a great introduction.
Program robots to do something:
We have both the Recon Programmable Rover and Mindstorms NXT.
The former is much easier to play with for a few minutes at a time, but its capabilities are very limited. The best part of it, though, is that my kids will often teach friends how to program it. Mindstorms is much more involved, and requires a lot of space and time to work on it. The programming aspect of it runs through a computer running a striped down version of LabView, which is what runs a lot of research laboratories.
More and more such robots seem to be coming on the market daily.
Learn with other kids:
Lego First
Lego League
Time to start learning a language? Start with ones that are more graphical and visual:
Logo (the original turtle robots)
Scratch programming
Looking for summer camp?
There are dozens of camps on programming apps (using mostly drag-and-drop tools), introductions to Mindstorms, using Scratch or Logo, and more. We are also finding summer camps that begin at the middle school level for girls only, which can be a lot less intimidating for those girls that haven't been programming their turtles and robots since (pre?)-kindergarten.
Let’s get started. Maybe in a few years, when I recommend to a student that she take computer science before graduating from college, she might say “I took that in high school.”