64 South Bay Accent What about the GIRLS? she’s found that training girls to use such tools as a laser cutter offers technical and math training along with boosting self-assurance. One Silicon Valley voice that stands out is that of Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, famous for her controversial “Lean In” advice to women. According to iD Tech Vice President Karen Thurm Safran, Sandberg and YouTube executive Susan Wojcicki approached iD Tech about starting an all-girls STEM program. Based in Campbell, iD Tech was founded in 1999 and bills itself as “the world’s No. 1 tech camp.” It has grown from 200 students and four locations in year one to 80 locations and 35,000 children this summer, with thousands more on a wait list. Yet fewer than 15 percent of iD Tech campers are girls. “While that is pretty much standard with the industry, we want to do more,” says Thurm Safran. This summer, the company unveiled the “Alexa Café,” a tech program aimed at 10- to 14-year-old girls. “We did a lot of research, and this program is very, very different,” she says. “We try to approach girls who might never take programming.” Girls are asked to create a collaborative philanthropic project (along the lines of Toms Shoes, says Thurm Safran), and learn coding and Web page design. The company has pledged that for every Alexa Café attendee this summer, it will offer a scholarship to another girl at one of its flagship camps. Also helping the effort is technology’s changing role. “Ten years ago, STEM camp was not considered very cool,” acknowledges Thurm Safran. “Now it’s hip.” Sometimes kids just need a little nudge. Merryhill School’s fifth-graders participate in the Tech Museum’s annual team challenge, and recently one group ended up being all girls. They called themselves the “Dew-Its” in honor of the challenge, which involved water—a fitting homophone to their attitude. “These girls came up to me,” recalls Merryhill Principal Karen Cooper, “and said, ‘We recognize we are just as fantastic as boys. One of us could be the next Bill Gates, but now he’ll have to be a girl.’” COURTESY OF IDTECH EVEN—AND ESPECIALLY—IN forward thinking Silicon Valley, the gender gap is alive and well. Thus the STEM movement’s biggest challenge may be to not leave half the population behind. According to November 2013 National Science Foundation figures looking at professions requiring a college education, women hold only 30 percent of physical science, 23 percent of computer science and a paltry 12 percent of electrical engineering positions. Separately, the foundation looked at the number of degrees awarded between 1991 and 2010. While women are increasing their presence in the social and biosciences, their numbers in engineering and computer science stubbornly are staying below 30 percent. “The problem that remains is that girls are losing interest in math and science by 11 or 12,” says Hillbrook science teacher Christa Flores, who wrote her thesis on the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the STEM field and now deals on a daily basis with preteens. “They start losing self-confidence and confidence in their bodies. That interest may rebound by college but then it can be too late if they didn’t take the right courses.” Flores’ approach is to work on the confidence issue. For example, differently. You might still read a science book to them, but they then have to put into their own words why that meteor hit the world. “We can’t get rid of the fundamentals because then there would be no foundation,” Cooper adds. “STEM is like furniture. You still need a house with a floor and roof. OK, STEM for me is like awesome furniture, but you still need the foundation.” Merryhill students in grades 3 and up are exposed to computer coding, which Cooper terms a universal language. Fifth-graders participate in the annual Tech Museum Challenge, which poses real-life problems, such as pumping water up a hill, and students devise creative solutions in teams. Teamwork is also considered vital at Hillbrook, a Los Gatos junior kindergarten through middle school. Christa Flores came on board in 2011 and now teaches fifth-grade science. “The first year I was here, we did an audit and redesigned the program around problem-solving and engineering instead of just lab sciences,” Flores recalls. “You might walk into my classroom and not recognize it as a science classroom,” she says. Instead her base of operations is the Hillbrook iLab MakerSpace, a flexible space that consists of mobile whiteboards and rolling tables, as well as 3-D printers and a laser cutter. Part of Hillbrook’s fifth-grade STEM curriculum includes a second-semester ALEXA CAFÉ Alexa Café, an innovative STEM program for girls ages 10 to 14, launched this summer at iD Tech in Campbell.
South Bay Accent - Aug/Sep 2014
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