Stories from SXSWi 2008 – Attracting girls to IT

15% of people are from the northeast
15% of people left handed
15% of people in the world have no cell phone, or no Internet
And… less than 15% of computer science majors are female. [1]

This was the lead-in for the panelists and I liked the tie-ins of 15.

Since this session, I have talked to girls around the 12-15 year old range, and I completely agree with all the panelist’s observations about how girls don’t think they’re good at something, especially computers.

In this session I met Ashe Dryden and we talked about BarCamp Austin – she’s an organizer for BarCamp Milwaukee. I asked her to watch my laptop while I got a “pop” and offered to get her one too. I laughed when she asked upon my return, “Where are you from, if you say ‘pop!'” I have lived in Austin seven years, but haven’t let go of my Midwestern roots (Indiana and Ohio), where we say pop for all kinds of soda, pop, soda pop, Coke, and fizzy drink. 🙂

After the session I spoke to Clare Richardson of GirlStart about how the Austin XO user group would like to help out with their projects. One that’s upcoming is the Take IT Global showcase, where they’re working on games for the OLPC project. It sounds like they have enough XOs for their upcoming event, April 26th, which I plan to attend. They’re going to show off the educational game projects that the girls in the GirlStart program have been programming. They’re using a wiki to keep notes, collaborate, do project planning, all for the work they’re doing on their games. It’s great fun to read the game ideas.

Here are my notes from the session.

Clare Richardson – GirlStart in Austin, TX
What class in middle school did you feel smart and confident in?
art, phys ed, math, computer lab?

TechBridge
Free afterschool programs and summer programs.
Role models are key, role model training. Great training document available on their website. I plan to read through it for ideas on taking the XO to classrooms.

Jay Moore MentorNet
Email connection with mentors, 10-15 minutes a week.

Abby Tittizer IBM Extreme Blue
Internship program, not specific to women, for college students.

Q: What are the common misconceptions about girls and technology and getting them interested?
A: Perception is boring and nerdy and you have to already be good at it. Girls have altruistic missions.
Girls don’t think they’re qualified to do something, but boys “just go for it.” girls think that an internship means they already need to know how to do it.

Suggestions:

• Have girls sign up in pairs for a computer class.
• Spend time with your kids teachers and guidance counselors to find out more about their science education, etc.
• Boys tend to have an inflated sense of their own competence.
• UT has a club that has a roadshow that goes out to TX high schools to help recruit.
• They use pair programming in introductory classes.

Updated to add: There’s a great article in the NYTimes that I found through Anne Zelenka‘s del.icio.us links called “Sorry, Boys, This is our Domain.” While girls might not be computer science majors, they are excellent bloggers and customizers of all sorts of web and social sites. Quote: “…a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).” Girls may have more patience and perseverance to stick to a site that requires content updates.

SXSW Interactive starts today – pack your XO

So many sessions that I want to attend, but at least sched.org lets me select more than one session at a time. Such an awesomely simple interface and login is so quick, just an email address and a password and you’re scheduling in no time.

I’ve also put an invite out on upcoming.org to anyone who wants to meet with other XO users to come to Las Manitas for a late Sunday lunch. Thanks tantek for the photo.

Taking the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop to the preschool classroom

What can you teach with the XO laptop? I’m still pondering that question for US-based classrooms. I’m reading the news from Birmingham Alabama and the blog entries from Dallas-Fort Worth Texas school systems with interest. Apparently you can buy a certain minimum of XO laptops if your school district or other group wants to incorporate them into their learning activities. Sign up at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Laptop_requests. With some grassroots fundraising efforts, a large-scale purchase of XO laptops seems attainable, perhaps even for Austin ISD.

Last week’s post with a picture of my four-year-old using the XO at our dining room table generated a response that a picture shows it all. I’d say that these pictures capture even more of the spirit of the OLPC project, showing a preschool teacher and two students have a blast with them, taking pictures of themselves, each other, and even taking pictures of the others’ XO.

I’ll also attest to the durability and sturdiness of these laptops. My son was walking quite quickly in the classroom with it (okay, maybe even running, but it’s not like he runs with scissors!) and tripped and fell with it. He was unhurt, these kids bounce back unbelievably from falls, and I was equally impressed with the complete durability that the XO displayed even when it probably took a bounce on the carpeted classroom floor.

So, what am I teaching with the XO?

My first session with the kids focused mostly on TamTamMini and Turtle Art, both auditory and visually appealing. These are four-year-olds, so they’re a little young for the target age for these laptops. The target age is about 6-12 years old. But, they figured out the touchpad quickly (and some, like my son, want the touchpad to allow for a mouseclick event when tapped like my Dell laptop responds, but not so with the XO touchpad.)

The kids also crowd around the screen and want to touch everything, which is fine, until I want to do the Turtle Art demonstration which involves clicking Project, and then clicking the icon for Samples and then waiting and then opening a sample file. But they were rewarded for their hands-off stand-off with bubbles and rainbow colors.

In Turtle Art, I thought I’d always have to open the Blocks menu and drag the “clean “puzzle piece out, then click it to get the full starting effect. However, I just discovered that many of the samples have the clean block out already, it’s just hidden behind the menu. I finally figured out to click the hide, erase, or stop buttons to have the turtle stop mid-way through his task. The kids liked the Turtle Art demonstration as well and asked for more. I must admit, I didn’t feel like I was teaching them anything, but these are four-year-olds. With repetition and some more ideas we could build several learning opportunities around that Activity, I believe. I just got a great PDF file showing how to make the turtle draw letters, and I intend to use this demonstration for my next visit.

The next session I attempted to get the Acoustic Tape Measure Activity to work, but it failed miserably. I think it’s because I didn’t go to the Group view and Invite the other XO to the Activity. We’ll try again another day, after I’ve done some more testing.

I also introduced the Record Activity and this was a huge hit for photos. I didn’t show them how to record audio or video, thinking I’d save that for another day. The pictures it takes are 640 x 480, and quite nice with natural lighting. See examples at the XO Photos group on flickr. In a future update of the XO, EXIF data will be available on the photos taken with the XO, and Flickr can then identify the source of the photo as an XO. I’ll have to upload some of the photos the kids took.

One kid even took a picture of his behind with it, reaching way back to push the O button on the game keypad (a nice shortcut way to take pictures with the Record Activity so that you don’t have to use the touchpad and X button click!) His teacher and I laughed so hard at his ingenuity and problem-solving – just to get a picture of his bottom.

Who else has taken their XO into a classroom setting, and what are you learning and teaching with the XO? I’d love to hear more, and I’ll be at SXSW Interactive and BarCamp Austin as well so please do say hi if you see me there.

How to download and copy epub files using the XO laptop

Bob DuCharme recently converted 16 children’s books from the Project Gutenberg archive into .epub format for use with FBReader on the XO laptop. Thanks Bob!

I’ve just walked through the scenario of downloading the epub files from Bob’s download page and copying them into the correct directory for FBReader to read them. Here are the instructions with screenshots taken directly from the XO. If you see inefficiencies, please let me know because my Linux is only good enough to make me very, very dangerous to files and folders. 🙂

1. Start up the Browse Activity on the XO.
   
2. Click in the address bar and press ctrl-A to select all the text, then type in snee.com/epubkidsbooks and press enter.
3. Scroll down to the book you want to download, and click the link. You’ll see a nice countdown while the file downloads.
   
4. Switch over to the Journal Activity, either by pressing the magnifying glass icon key or by going to the Home View and clicking the Journal icon at the bottom of the Home circle.
5. Insert an SD card or a USB stick into the XO. The Journal shows an icon in a bottom bar when you put in external storage media.
6. Locate the downloaded epub file, but don’t launch it (they launch as EToys projects, go figure.) Drag and drop the file to the SD or USB icon in the bottom bar.
   
7. Click the Home View key and start the Terminal Activity – you have to scroll right to see the Terminal launch icon.
8. Click in the Terminal window (otherwise you’ll be typing in the Terminal search box). Find the name of the external media, which is in the /media directory. For example, type:
   df
9. You’ll see the name of your SD card or USB stick in the row with /media/ before it. You need that name to copy the epub file from the external media to the correct location for FBReader to find the book file.
   
10. Change to the media directory where the epub file is stored and rename the file to something shorter. For example, type:
    cd /media/USBMEM
mv "File TheThreeBears.epub downloaded from_http___www.snee.com_ebooks_TheThreeBears.epub..zip" TheThreeBears.epub LittleBoPeep-ANurseryRhymePictureBook.epub
11. Copy the newly shortened-name file to the ~Books directory. For example, type:
    cp TheThreeBears.epub ~/Books
12. Launch FBReader by typing FBReader at the Terminal prompt.
    

Tips:

• FBReader must be installed on the XO. It’s a simple process. Go to the Terminal Activity and type:
  su -c ‘rpm -i http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/7/i386/fbreader-0.8.8-2.fc7.i386.rpm’
• If you don’t want to type a whole bunch of text on the little XO keyboard, eject the SD card or pull out the USB stick, and put it in a “regular-sized” computer, and then rename the file there.
• Or, plug in a USB keyboard with normal size key layout to do all your typing in the Terminal Activity.
• If your USB stick has a space in the name, you can’t use it with your XO. Put it into another computer and rename it without a space.

Austin, Texas – XO on the menu for lunch

Our three XOs in a row

We got the two other XO buyers that I know of in Austin for lunch last week – buyers of the One Laptop Per Child computer, called the XO laptop. Whurley and Mikus and I met at Berryhill Baja Grill, where indeed, wireless access was present. My XO was able to connect, but for some reason Whurley’s did not. And Mikus had hacked his network configuration to use a USB-Ethernet adapter cable, so his wireless wasn’t working. We thought that Whurley’s machine would be able to “mesh” with mine to get a connection, but that wasn’t the case. Even in the Group View I couldn’t see the other XOs sitting right next to me. Pout.

Still, we got to compare colors (look at the variety!), try out the Distance Activity (it didn’t work, and it’s not acoustic, we are not fooled), and Meebo worked like a charm on my XO. So all in all, a fun time! I think one of the Linux Austin groups got their XOs together recently, and we’re going to try to get together again, so stay tuned. Rumor has it that 30 XOs were purchased in the Austin area, so hopefully we can get them together and see what we can do.

I’ll report more later this week when I show Turtle Art and Tam Tam Jam to the four-year-olds in my son’s preschool class. Wish me luck giving a demo to a bunch of four-year-olds!