Tag Archives: teaching

On our last full day together in Rwanda, the TechWomen delegation visited Girl Hub and the University of Rwanda – College of Science and Technology (formerly called Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management or KIST).

Girl Hub is a strategic collaboration between the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Nike Foundation. Girl Hub helps transform the lives of adolescent girls living in poverty by unleashing their potential and empowering them with the assets they need to end poverty for themselves, their families and their community.

Girl Hub publishes Ni Nyampinga magazine and distributes it to 90,000 girls in Rwanda.

Four of the six 2013 Emerging TechWomen Leaders from Rwanda were KIST graduates. We spoke with the faculty, and enjoyed a well-escorted campus tour before meeting with about a hundred women technical students – answering their personal and professional questions. After our university visit, the TechWomen group went shopping for fabric, then had a farewell gathering at the hotel. Tomorrow, the first group of us departs for the mountains to see the gorillas.  This has been a moving and inspiring week.

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

As part of yesterday’s TechWomen delegation visit to the Gashora Girls Academy (GGAST) in Rwanda, I worked with other TechWomen to present two sessions of the Blogging and Web Research Workshop. Here is the list of blog topics that the girls signed up to write about as guests on Katysblog:

1. Clubs at Gashora and what goes on
2. Novels in the library (especially by James Patterson)
3. Team sports and games
4. School talent and fashion show
5. End of term bonfire
6. Many clubs for personal interest, community service helping local families
7. Why Gashora is non-religious
8. Dr. Ben Carson’s books on America
9. School magazine (“Light of GGAST”) – reprinting good articles
10. GGAST focus on science and technology
11. “Peace and Love Proclaimers” Club – to remember the genocide
12. Graduation day
13. Parent visits
14. University counseling and plans

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

Today was the TechWomen delegation’s first day of meetings in Kigali, Rwanda. We met with the inspiring girls and young women students of the Akilah Institute for Women, coached proposals for STEM start up companies by kLab Open Space for IT Entrepreneurs, and heard about the ambitious projects of the Girls in ICT group – including their Miss Geek Rwanda entrepreneur contest (to be at the same time as the Miss Rwanda beauty pageant) on International Women’s Day. In the evening, we enjoyed an impressively-organized networking event and reception set up by our Rwandan TechWomen Emerging Leaders for two hundred local IT executives and the press.

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

There is another news story about our TechWomen delegation – in the Rwanda Eye today: “Global ICT experts to inspire Rwandan women” by Olive Ndaka, 29 January 2014. I am almost done creating my handout for the Gashora Girls Academy workshop I am developing – on blogging and web-based research.

Later on 29 January 2014… Here is the “Blogging and Web Research Workshop” handout – ready to go!

3 February 2014 – Here are the presentation slides to go with the handout for today’s presentation to the Gashora Academy girls.

Image Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

I am in the process of switching from an iPad to an iPad Mini for my upcoming TechWomen mentoring program delegation trip to Rwanda, so I have been sorting what Kindle ebooks and iBooks I will take along…  I am a big reader, finishing one to two books most weeks. When I was ten years old, the librarian in our local public library mentioned that I averaged a book a day (shorter books, back then!). In 2013, I started reading books online, so now I can track my titles. Below are some of the books I read in 2013 that I liked best, meaning I will probably read them again.

* means a re-read (because it was too good to read just once!)

• Bryan, Christopher, And God Spoke / The Authority of the Bible for the Church Today (2002)
• * Bull, Emma, Bone Dance (1991)
• * Bull, Emma, War for the Oaks (1987)
• De Quincey, Thomas, Miscellaneous Essays (1859)
• * Dickens, Charles, The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (2011) – 2013 focus was on The Christmas Carol
• * Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Volumes I and II (1986)
• * Dumas, Alexandre, The Three Musketeers (2010)
• Flint, Eric 1632 (2000)
• * Gaiman, Neil, Anansi Boys (2005)
• * Gaiman, Neil, and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens / The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)
• Holy Bible – New Revised Standard Version (1989)
• Hunt, Linda Lawrence, Bold Spirit / Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America (2003)
• Ilibagiza, Immaculee, Left to Tell / Discovering God Admist the Rwandan Holocaust (2006)
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Christianity / The First Three Thousand Years (2009)
• * Melville, Herman, Moby Dick / Or, The Whale (1891)
• * Modesitt, L.E., The Magic of Recluce (1991)
• * Nix, Garth, The Abhorsen Trilogy (2003)
• * Pierce, Tamora Beka Cooper: The Hunt Records (2006)
• * Pratchett, Terry, Small Gods (1992)
• * Pratchett, Terry, The Wee Free Men (2003)
• Sandberg, Sheryl, Lean In / Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013)
• Sansom, C.J., Dissolution (2003)
• * Sayers, Dorothy, Lord Peter Views the Body (1928)
• * Sayers, Dorothy, The Nine Tailors (1934)
• * Shakespeare, William, The Compete Plays of Shakespeare (2011) – in 2013, focus was on Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Twelfth Night
• * Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash (1992)
• Verghese, Abraham, Cutting for Stone (2009)
• Webb, Maynard, Rebooting Work / Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship (2013)