[Edu-sig] Re: [Tutor] Girls, women and Programming (- and Python)

[Eve Kotyk]

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> 
> I'll do it in German and I hope to get it published, as there is a
> very severe lack of material of this kind in the German speaking
> countries. (On the other side Python still is not very well known
> at least among teachers in Germany - so it's quite uncertain who
> will be willing to study such things. Nevertheless trying to make
> Python more popular is worth the effort.)

Kudos!  I think this is great thing.

> 
> 1) Why are there so few girl and women interested in programming?
> (look, for instance, at the list of partiicipants of all those mailing
> lists)

I don't actually know the answer to this..it may still be partly
enculturation.  Its still not entirely cool for a women to think. 
Especially for them to think logically.  As a generality it might be
that girls often prefer to base their thinking on values rather than
principle.  Which is not a bad way to organized your thought processes
it just means that that they prefer to be taught in a subjective manner
rather than an objective manner.  ie:  How does this knowledge apply to
them and the human being beside them.> 
> And consequently
> 2) How do I get them interested? Which kinds of material, approaches,
> examples etc. are appealing to female students?

I'm determined to learn Phython but I find that my lack of general
knowledge of programming makes it difficult to figure out what to write.
 Because I'm a painter, I'll use that as an analogy.  Many people who do
not know how to use the materials and language of paint will often
flounder when asked to paint a picture. The question is "well what
should I paint".  When they know the language and the material it
suddenly doesn't matter what they paint...anything will do just so you
can make something beautiful with the language and the materials.  When
I speak of language here I'm speaking of the principles of pictorial
depiction.  So I think one of the ways to get girls (anyone really) 
interested is to design projects for them to do, that are fun and almost
inadvertently teach the language.  > 
> Do YOU have any experiences concerning this question. Jeff Elkners
> Python-Video implicitly adresses this problem in a very fine way,
> choosing a girl as the main propagator of Python.

Hmmm I didn't know about this...will have search for it.

E
-- 

ekotyk

http://members.shaw.ca/e.kotyk/virtualstudio.htm

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