On Monday 13 Jan 2003 1:30 am, you wrote: > This article from NYTimes.com > has been sent to you by [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Hi Anne, > Here's the article. NYTIMES is a free registration, but I realize > that to someone in UK that might be totally unwarranted ;-) Mike > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thanks for that, Mike. It is very interesting, and, I think, has some very fair insights. A short while ago I took a part-time MSc in Information Systems at the local university. There were not a high proportion of girls there, but the makeup of the group is interesting. There were 3 or 4 women past their first youth (and you could say that again for me <g>) and the rest were young Asian girls. I know the recent climate of grants from Europe to certain areas made it a cheaper option for Asian girls than for most English girls, but I don't think finance was the option. The older white English women were for the main looking a either a career change or a career advancement. Presumably the young Asian girls had specific goals also. I think it is true to say that on the whole women undertake serious study for a particular end. One module that was compulsory in my course was Networks. I really looked forward to this. I had built the home lan and administered a Novell Netware lan at work, and hoped to gain a great deal more insight into networks generally. Stupidly, I had even thought that there would be some practical work involved. Instead there was a series of lectures that quoted verbatim from the prescribed reference book, going into great detail on layers of transport protocol. Now this is the sort of thing that I am interested to read about, to get an idea of how it works, but in truth could see no reason for the stress upon it. Yes, it aids understanding, but it appears to have no practical application in my life. Perhaps this is a key to getting girls more interested. Show them an application that they would enjoy, then tell them that with a little help and a day or so set aside, they too could have that. Show a teenage girl that she could easily burn her own compilation CD - all her favourite tracks on one CD - if only she had a cd burner on her computer. When you've got her interested, put the screwdriver in her hand. DO NOT do it for her. Talk her through, both what she is doing and why. Talking of master and slave drives will not be more than she can understand, yet it would bore her to tears if she had to hear about it in a classroom. Girls tackle technical issues with a stuborn zeal if they can see something in it that they want to achieve, but why bother if it doesn't do anything for them? So they have to be shown that they can have positive benefits from learning. It isn't 'cool' to be an egghead, but it's cool to have your own compilation cd. Just my thoughts. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302
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