[Edu-sig] Articles of possible interest

[Tim Peters]

[Dorothea Salo, on Guido's CP4E essay in the Linux Journal supplement]
> So, what are the little nippers up to, according to van Rossum? Let's
> see:
>
>      "We walk up to two girls in the back of the class who are busy
>      debugging a Barbie dress-up game used as an exercise."
>
> Excuse me while I barf. Do people really wonder why women aren't
> hackers?

[Greg Ward]
> Yeah, I just about barfed there too.  Guido, what *WERE* you
> thinking?!?!?  I am no big fan of "political correctness", but this
> particular example was just plain dumb.

Hmm.  Barbie remains a 2 billion $/year business for Mattel, one of the most
successful and longest-lived kids' products ever.  A revealing story about
how Jill Barad built this empire can be found at:

    http://www.businessweek.com/1998/21/covstory.htm

WRT computers, software titles like "Barbie Riding Club", "Barbie Detective"
and "Barbie Fashion Designer" are credited with *creating* a profitable
retail market for "girl software", and remain top sellers; e.g.,

    "On the one hand the Barbie software is great – it really opened
    up retailers' eyes that there was a market for these games," said
    Roberta Furger, author of a new book, "Does Jane Compute? Preserving
    Our Daughters' Place in the Cyber Revolution."

    At the same time, she warns, "You don't want to define the market
    by saying Barbie equals girls' software." There needs to be a variety
    of games appealing to the interests of all girls, she said.

from a contemporaneous early story at:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/frompost/feb98/girlware2.htm

Mattel's current offerings are described at the condescendingly <wink>
named:

    http://www.barbie.com/girls/softwareforgirls/

I don't make a hobby of studying the kids' software market, but I just had
to respond to this one since virtually all of my friends' young daughters do
in fact spend countless hours with their Barbie CDs.  If you want something
kids are actually interested in, watch what they do!

the-day-a-girl-is-shunned-for-loving-barbie-is-the-day-i-
    stop-blowing-up-the-universe<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim