Four Silicon Valley girls are on the panel – Amy from Stanford Univ (Homestead
High School public school grad), Madeline (Gunn High School, a public
school), Sophie (Girls Middle School, a private school), and Brittany
(Notre Dame, a girls’ private school).
Unfortunately, neither of the two scheduled panelists from Harker School
are present. All of the girls come from families where one or both parents
are Engineers and their technical interests are strongly supported.
The girls are very bright, confident, and friendly when
answering questions from a packed room here at the Hopper Conference in San
Diego. The first questions were on what the girls are learning in math and
computer science and if they see any differences between how boys and girls
use computers. The audience also seems interested in any differences they
see between public and private schools, especially in what courses are
offered and whether the girls had taken them.
I asked the girls whether they had their own laptop and what was their
relationship to it. Three of the girls did have a private laptop but all
of the girls were very involved with their computers for communications,
music, schoolwork and entertainment. Amy was most emphatic in saying
“If my dorm room caught fire, my laptop would be the first and only thing
worth saving.”
The audience follows up with questions about internet confidentiality,
software preferences, and their interest in computer hardware design.
Brittany talked about going around with her friend in her Palo Alto
neighborhood streets on trash
pick up day collecting electronics and computer parts to take apart.
When the question comes up on why the girls think that there are so few young
women in computer science, answers include “too much commitment of time”,
“scary”, “no one knows about it – what it is”, “needs to be a graduation
requirement class so everyone takes it”, “girls are encouraged to take
science and history but not math – people don’t think it is creative”.
The girls are confident that computer science can change the world and that
they will continue to be involved even if it is not their college major.
Michelle Hutton, the panel moderator and a teacher at Girls Middle School
talked about computer science being a GMS expectation and requirement and
what a gift that is. She said that she had discovered computer science to
be more available pre-college than she had originally thought but that
computer science is sometimes hard for students to find out about or make
time for among competing academic requirements. Michelle also encouraged
people to join the Computer Science Teachers’ Assoc. (CSTA) and to put
up the CSTA poster that was part of Hopper’s conference package. She hopes
to encourage more high schoolers, particularly girls, to become interested
in computer science.
KatysBlog 
Amazing that they still hear the argument that computing is “not creative.” That’s the same argument I heard in the late 70’s. Hence, I ended up in liberal arts, going to law school (hardly creative), and coming back into tech through the back door.
Sounds like it was a great panel!