Re: Learning from Dojos who have been successful in attracting & retaining girls
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Federica Triglia
Apr 20, 2015, 6:47:38 AM4/20/15
to coderdo...@googlegroups.com
Hi everybody, I would start sharing our experience here in Coderdojo Brianza.
I'm sorry, this is a long text: I don't have a gift for synthesis :) and my English is not as good as I would like.
We're a small dojo, we organize our appointments once a month from October to March at two public libraries. We split our ninjas in two groups: 6-9 years old and 10-14 years old. In the first group we have 50% girls, in the second one less than 5%. We loose our girls at the shift between middle-school and high-school.
To bring back girls at programming, this year in occasion of the national "woman's day" (8th of March) we held a special 10-14 years old "girls only" coderdojo. We had a special guest motivating our 'kunoichi': Monica Marelli, an Italian physicist and writer. We had guest from another dojo from Brescia to speak about web safety with parents and the event was twin with a similar one held by Coderdojo Trento the day before.
We proposed to create with Scratch a tutorial on how to apply the theory of complementary colors to the make up. All the girls have the basis from art class at school and Monica gave them a revision.
10 girls (out of fifteen booking) partecipated: they were all very shy and afraid of making mistakes. We showed our version of the game and they preferred to copy step by step our code instead of trying by themselves. It was very difficult to engage them, even on simple and "non tech" questions like "how do you use your mobile phone?" or "have you ever been to a theatre?". In the end we gave them a satisfaction survey about the event: they all said it was fun and they would be glad to repeat the experience in mixed boys-girls groups. But all the "open" questions went blank ('What would you like to be?', 'What do you like about technology?', 'Any suggestions on how we could improve our dojo?') And the truth is that we totally lost two of the girls: they told us that their mothers forced them to partecipate, they weren't interested and they didn't understand anything. So I don't understand why they gave us a positive survey: maybe they were afraid to be rude.
We left the game unfinished and we asked the girls to end it at home and share it with us later. No one have done so.
This is a story of a half success :) the organization of the event went well, but I don't think that we really succeded in motivating the girls to programming.
From this experience we learned that:
- it's better not to show the code before: here in Italy students know that "the blackboard is right" and they're not encouraged to try different ways from the one that the teacher shows (sad thing!);
- propose a project, not the implementation: maybe not having a game "ready" would have engaged more the girls;
- make a "girls only" dojo is a way to break the ice but girls do better in mixed groups where boys open the way, even by making something "stupid" like playing Scratch sounds all loud. In our class there were two girls that have attended before at our dojo: they "lowered" themselves to the other partecipants even if they could have gone on faster and better.
- we made a mistake making this appointment the last of the season because we can't see if some girls come back. (Next dojo is in October).
Here you can find info about us (Italian only, sorry)
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/chi-siamo/
the event
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/event/mezzago-8-marzo-2015-coderdojo-in-rosa/
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/2015/03/15/coderdojo-speciale-ragazze-come-andata/
and the game
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/2015/03/10/scratch-per-esempi-makeup/
I hope to hear your comment soon.
Regards
Federica
I'm sorry, this is a long text: I don't have a gift for synthesis :) and my English is not as good as I would like.
We're a small dojo, we organize our appointments once a month from October to March at two public libraries. We split our ninjas in two groups: 6-9 years old and 10-14 years old. In the first group we have 50% girls, in the second one less than 5%. We loose our girls at the shift between middle-school and high-school.
To bring back girls at programming, this year in occasion of the national "woman's day" (8th of March) we held a special 10-14 years old "girls only" coderdojo. We had a special guest motivating our 'kunoichi': Monica Marelli, an Italian physicist and writer. We had guest from another dojo from Brescia to speak about web safety with parents and the event was twin with a similar one held by Coderdojo Trento the day before.
We proposed to create with Scratch a tutorial on how to apply the theory of complementary colors to the make up. All the girls have the basis from art class at school and Monica gave them a revision.
10 girls (out of fifteen booking) partecipated: they were all very shy and afraid of making mistakes. We showed our version of the game and they preferred to copy step by step our code instead of trying by themselves. It was very difficult to engage them, even on simple and "non tech" questions like "how do you use your mobile phone?" or "have you ever been to a theatre?". In the end we gave them a satisfaction survey about the event: they all said it was fun and they would be glad to repeat the experience in mixed boys-girls groups. But all the "open" questions went blank ('What would you like to be?', 'What do you like about technology?', 'Any suggestions on how we could improve our dojo?') And the truth is that we totally lost two of the girls: they told us that their mothers forced them to partecipate, they weren't interested and they didn't understand anything. So I don't understand why they gave us a positive survey: maybe they were afraid to be rude.
We left the game unfinished and we asked the girls to end it at home and share it with us later. No one have done so.
This is a story of a half success :) the organization of the event went well, but I don't think that we really succeded in motivating the girls to programming.
From this experience we learned that:
- it's better not to show the code before: here in Italy students know that "the blackboard is right" and they're not encouraged to try different ways from the one that the teacher shows (sad thing!);
- propose a project, not the implementation: maybe not having a game "ready" would have engaged more the girls;
- make a "girls only" dojo is a way to break the ice but girls do better in mixed groups where boys open the way, even by making something "stupid" like playing Scratch sounds all loud. In our class there were two girls that have attended before at our dojo: they "lowered" themselves to the other partecipants even if they could have gone on faster and better.
- we made a mistake making this appointment the last of the season because we can't see if some girls come back. (Next dojo is in October).
Here you can find info about us (Italian only, sorry)
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/chi-siamo/
the event
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/event/mezzago-8-marzo-2015-coderdojo-in-rosa/
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/2015/03/15/coderdojo-speciale-ragazze-come-andata/
and the game
http://www.coderdojobrianza.it/2015/03/10/scratch-per-esempi-makeup/
I hope to hear your comment soon.
Regards
Federica
Giustina Mizzoni
Apr 27, 2015, 11:36:45 AM4/27/15
to Federica Triglia, coderdo...@googlegroups.com
Hi Federica
Thanks for sharing your story, and the game you used in Scratch.
I think your lessons are really interesting and I have heard similar stories about engagement from other Dojos.
Has anyone had successes in engaging girls aged 12+ in Dojos? If so what did you do? What content did you use? How did you make it seem 'cool'?
Look forward to hearing from you,
Giustina
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