My Regional Science Fair Experience Year Three

I feel as if we have reached the end of an era as my middle school son competed in his last and final science fair as a junior competitor.  And in true form he went out with a bang winning the junior computer science category for the third year in a row.  He even collected an email from someone offering him an internship if he needed one.
On Sunday we all piled into the auditorium and awaited the usual awards that come with computer science, an invitation to join the Association for Computing Machinery and maybe a citation from the patent office.  Computer Science isn’t a popular category for engineering or for prizes. 

So as they are going through the names it is clear that the ACM is missing from this year’s event and the kids in CS, are awarded citations from the patent and trade office and two get bags from the Air Force and the sole girl competing gets something from the Society of Women Engineers. 

Now all in all I find this a bit frustrating given the fact that last week we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day and we now celebrate CS Education week and we are changing the look of computer science so that it is appealing to kids.  We are building educational programs like Alice, Storytelling Alice and Scratch to show kids that Computer Science is cool and I start to wonder what incentive do the kids really have…why computer science….?  .  I knew the level of knowledge and skill that went into that project was probably far more than many of these kids but if you don’t know computer science, you don’t get it.
 
And then they start making the announcements for the grand awards.

These awards are the best of the best.  All of the winners are competing against each other for that best project, that best score, that best of the best and then I hear it, a tie for first and a young lady jumps up on to the stage and collects her award for some biological science project, and the second name, my son and his computer science project.  He gets up out of his seat and jumps up on to the stage to collect his medal and I couldn’t be prouder.  With a huge grin he walks across the stage and down the steps to his surprised peers and I think still in a bit of shock himself.

So he did it.  Finally someone noticed his software engineering effort. Mr. Hangey in his closing speech made it clear to watch out for the progressive sciences and technology.  What a way to end junior competition.  On the way home he started talking about coming up with an idea for next year.  So away we go to senior competition next year because he has incentive. 

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

As I sit here at my keyboard trying to be inspired to Blog about Women in Technology and Science to honor Ada Lovelace I am sort of put aside to what has brought my own self to a career in technology. Those who study or know the greats of computer science also know that one of the other greats in computer science history was also a woman.  Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was renowned in the field and congress has enacted Computer Science Education Week in December (5-11, 2010) to raise awareness to Computer Science and honor Grace’s Birthday.  Similar to Ada Lovelace in being the first to write a program, Grace Hopper was the first to write a compiler.  Aren’t women geeks just amazing? 

Ok, so back to my story or HerStory as we call it in the Girl Scouts…what inspired me, this writer artist, visionary of sorts to end up in a tech field promoting science and technology education.  To be honest, it was purely by accident.  I was set in my ways to set off in my education and become the teacher that I had always dreamed that I would be.  I would teach middle school, I would teach imagination and creative writing wherever it could fit into someone’s curriculum.

Having already spent a few years as a Navy wife being told that I could wait until my spouse was on shore duty, I postponed my education long enough.  So I found myself at the college signing up for classes for the second semester waiting in a line at the bookstore where I had worked part time.  I overheard a girl directly in front of me talking about a job “on base” and with her friend clearly uninterested, I poked my nose in and said that I could not help but overhear.  I was interviewed a few days later at the MacDonald’s on base and I must say the rest is history.   

The marriage didn’t last but the schooling certainly did and I continued as a single parent and put myself through school which at one point turned into more of a necessity versus a longing.  It wasn’t long before I figured out that a teacher’s salary was not going to support myself and my children and that the technology classes would better support the jobs that I had and where I was going.  Technology was where the money was, even if I had to fight for it.

I remember since then being interviewed for jobs and things being commented such as, do you think she would be the kind to get upset if she broke a nail or would I be intimidated by authority.  I remember asking for a pay raise once and being told that I should quit school and get married.  I remember being interrupted in the middle of a presentation and it being directed in a different direction.  I remember being scolded that I have done this longer that you and I should know far more, I remember being for being so good at my job that it took three people to replace me. 

Probably one of the most compelling times was when my job was to provide input for improvement and the developer did not like that I made any suggestions at all so went to the manager who scolded me for making them.  I think shortly thereafter I was being funded for 3.5 man years asking for help (that finally came 18 months later) and got scolded because one of the man years was pulled back by the program.  Funny that the manager never realized that I was doing such a good job that people wanted me.  They wanted to fund me so that I would work on their stuff.  Later he apologized.

Ok, so why am I here. Years later I see what I have done.  I know the good work that I have accomplished and I know that the program I worked on used to send me all over the country to tech people what I/we were doing with technology and how they could do it better.  People listened to me and trusted my opinion and my knowledge and I carried a sense of respect in spite of the bad ways that some treat women in technology.

In the middle of all of this, I was able to bring my children into the technology.  I was able to expose my sons and daughters to state of the art technology that many children did not or never would be able to see.  My eldest son was inspired and he took off with his interests similar technologies.  My younger children were exposed to math and science people as part of normal life.  It would not be strange to go to meet with friends and to be talking about a better way to do something. 

This became the impression that is left with my family.  That technology is acceptable and that someone is always looking for a better way.  This instilled into my son has brought him forward and has helped me to see that people like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and myself somehow keep the inspiration going.  It is up to those of us in the technology careers to inspire those that come after us for the world of science and technology is ever changing and it is in the inspiration of our own children that we can build a future in technology for all children.  Happy Ada Lovelace Day.

Can I Order Some Hash Browns Please?

This week is Computer Science Education Week ...I have been all over the internet and back and I found an awesome article yesterday.  It seems those people at MIT are addressing some of what I stated in my letter to the editor months ago.  You see whether we realize it or not we live in a technologically illiterate society.  I also got fired up about the so true negative stereotype of the "programmer" but I will save that for another blog.  If you missed the letter, it was in the August 19, Enterprise Newspaper.  


In my letter I talked about the lady trying to order french fries...only it wasn't french fries, it was hash browns and it really happened.  She was clueless about what to do since there was no "person" to check in with and only a touch screen and there was no one around to help her.  I did come to her rescue but it made me wonder about others like her.  I can imagine that someone could be overwhelmed and may just give up and end up leaving without their hash browns because frankly, they do not want to embarrass themselves by having to ask how to use the technology.  Sound familiar...if not you might need to do some research on illiteracy.

There is another side to this though.  The literacy isn't just the use of the "tool" because someone has to be able to know how to maintain it.  The internet is a perfect example of this.  Many people use the internet but few people know or understand what the internet really is.  Using something isn't the same as understanding something.  For example, if you were studying to be an architect and you go to Rome, you would not become a good architect by just by looking at and walking in/out the buildings.  You need to absorb their history, the materials, their structures and what the designers were thinking.  It is only by teaching technical literacy that our children will be able to build the foundations for future technologies. 

Conveying that the "T" in STEM education should be for literacy in Technology isn't so easy.  I had a STEM teacher tell me once when I asked about technology in the classroom that the students will have computers.  I wanted to ask "So are they going to take them apart and rebuild them?".  I knew that was not the case but really I had to bite my tongue to not ask.  It was puzzling to me though because the year before the school had canceled their only elective technology class.  I am sure it is funding, space or something but it still bothers me as to how a middle school who just gets a STEM program at their school decides to cancel an elective computer class.  But I was unfamiliar with the class so it is possible that they were just using the computers and not teaching literacy.  In that case, you might as well just use the computers in the library. 

Ok, so back on track...the article.  At MIT, they have developed a program called Scratch that is aimed at teaching programming to secondary education students.  Funded by the National Science Foundation, it is a environment similar to some of the communities that children can find out on the web (with parent approval) for sharing and playing games.  The major difference here is that while playing and creating, the kids are learning programming skills.  I checked it out a bit with my 11 year old and it looks to be pretty cool.  Conceptually it is similar to the Alice program and Storytelling Alice at Carnegie Mellon University but geared towards the younger set.  It definitely will open some new doors for making Computer Science cool for kids.

Computer Science Education Week http://www.csedweek.org/
Computer Science Teachers Association http://csta.acm.org/
MIT Scratch Project http://scratch.mit.edu/
Carnegie Mellon University's Alice Project http://www.alice.org/
National Science Foundation http://www.nsf.gov/
Referenced Article http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116070&org=NSF&from=news

Testing, Testing, 123

So had an interesting day today in the world of make believe.