emma's Blog: Who cares how technology works. Let's talk about what it can do.
March 12, 2008 at 21:08Bill Gates wants to know how we can encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology. I say, make it relevant!
Bill Gates posted a question on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. He asked, “How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?
When I checked today, 3567 people had posted responses.
I scanned through a few hundred of the responses. Most of them contain the standard fare … money, education, etc… things someone like Bill Gates has, um, already thought of. Gates puts all kinds of money into technology education, and has single-handedly shown millions of young people that there’s money in technology. We all know his net worth after all!
But there were some good nuggets in amongst the responses too.
Paul Overtoom, Senior Relationship Manager at ING Bank, suggests making nerds into “social heroes” by sponsoring their projects or hiring them while they’re still in school, so that they get a heard start on the social ladder.
This could work, but my favourite response came from Erika Gasaway a law student, and former Community Relations Manager at Intel. Erika says “We need to get better at introducing kids to the things they can "do" with science and math, as opposed to just teaching them the formulas. I have never been interested in science and math but, when my husband starting flying as a hobby it made want to understand aerodynamics, weather and sonic booms.”
Go Erika!
It sounds simple, but my years spent encouraging young people, and girls in particular, to consider technology careers led me to exactly this conclusion. It’s not about money or even ‘coolness’ so much as it is about RELEVANCE. What will I actually be able to DO with this technology? How will it help me change the world?
When I started the Wired Woman Society 11 years ago, we met with a wonderful primary school teacher named Kathleen. She told me something I’ve never forgotten, which is that boys will sit and play at a computer just for the sake of it. They don’t need a task, and aren’t worried about breaking the tools they're using … they’re just playing, and that’s how they learn to feel comfortable with technology. Girls, according to Kathleen, did better when someone asked them to accomplish a particular task … “create a postcard for a friend,” for instance. They were just as proficient as boys, and equally engaged with technology, as long as they saw a REASON for using the technology in the first place. For girls technology was a means to an end. For boys it was an end in itself.
Erika’s response to Gates’ question strikes me as grown-up example of exactly what Kathleen was seeing in her classroom. She found technology fascinating once she had a reason for learning it.
So, let’s worry less about salaries and more about making science and technology relevant for young people today. I can think of a hundred ways to do that, starting with creating applications, games, and teaching tools that focus more on what a technology can do, than on how it works.
For starters, would someone like to help me create an online game that shows me how Bayes' theorem works? A game that pits one possible outcome against another maybe.
