I’m sat here watching the teaching awards 2006 on TV in the UK and it’s amazing what teachers manage to do within schools. These teachers all want the children to be the best that they possibly can. One thing that does become apparent is that the teachers need the support and encouragement of the people around them before they can encourage others. I wonder then whether the teachers in the UK can manage to help make technology more accessible and exciting to all the children in the class, even the girls…
The thing is they need to know what it is that excites females about technology, the boys it seems fall into the subject area through games. As a girl I didn’t get into computers until I got given a book on how to program it. 
I know… very geeky! How to program the Commadore 64 in basic! For me it was all about the challenge of solving problems in UI design, and getting data from a to b. It was and still is also about creating something new and innovative for me. It’s not that dry dull subject that most people think it is and I think it takes a very special sort of teacher to bring that message across to students. Technology is such a fast growing area that curriculum is bound to always be many steps behind what is really happening around the children. Many children may not understand how big a part technology plays these days and I am hoping that one day we can get these messages across to them.
Technology is exciting, it has so much to offer and there are so many different things that are going on in the industry. If every school in the UK asked for one hour of a local high tech firm’s time to take someone from industry and place them in a school to do a single lesson on the subject I am sure the children would remember it. The thing is getting the right people to do those sort of talks. They have to be technologists who can make technology accessible, exciting and fun! Who knows if an initiative like this could get off the ground, then maybe we would see a whole lot more people from the UK going into those IT related degree courses and eventually into businesses!
I’d be amazed if there aren’t places doing this to some extent – but they are probably few and far between. Are there things we can do to make it easier for schools to find capable people to go in and talk to their pupils? I’m thinking not just about geeks … there’s probably a Women in Science initiative from the government that could be hooked into (as in: I have a memory that there is, but it might not still be running). It may be that something more specific would be better, though…
Important post… You and other talented women in technology ought to go into schools in order to speak to young women and along the way possible inspire them to higher education and careers in the world of science and technology.