Try "The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure". It's a cute book suitable for both children and adults that gets into various math concepts and patterns (fractals, Fibonacci sequence, irrational numbers, etc..) by explaining them in the context of a story.
A while ago, I remember seeing some news specials about teen and preteen girls who get strangers to buy them gifts from their public Amazon wish-lists. There was also an article about it on Salon Candy From Strangers . I don't think Amazon is targeting underage girls to do this, but those girls have sure figured out how to exploit it. I wonder if giving users the ability to send presents to kids, if the kids' names and addresses are hidden violates a security policy. Its kind of scary.
I think the programs that help younger girls get interested in computers are great. By the time women are in high school and college it is pretty hard to reverse the stereotypes associated with the IT industry. Many girls don't realize that programming involves creativity, good organization, and even social skills in addition to logic and math. It is typically not that women think they aren't smart enough to do CS- they often just aren't interested.
I used to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club, and the young girls (ages 6-10) were just as good at using computers as the boys (word processing, graphics programs, email, web surfing, playing games). But all the girls would play 'Dress Barbie' while the boys played more violent Flash games. It's not easy to reverse gender roles.
I may be the only one to say this, but I think Macromedia is heading in the right direction with Central and Flash Remoting. Obviously Flash Intros (or "skip intro") have limited business value, and Macromedia is doing the right thing by showcasing the Rich Interface capabilities of Flash in the context of real enterprise applications. Last year my company developed a J2EE app with a Flash interface ( http://commcenter.breckcomm.com ). Flash is the perfect front-end tool for this application, because the interface is far more robust and user-friendly than HTML will ever be. It utilizes caching effectively, loads up quickly, and looks like a 'real' application- not a web page. Something our clients have been asking for is an offline version of the application. It sounds like Central would be the perfect solution. If people begin to accept Flash as a legitimate UI for enterprise applications (both web and desktop), I think they will realize its benefits over HTML, Java Applets/Swing, etc..
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Try "The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure". It's a cute book suitable for both children and adults that gets into various math concepts and patterns (fractals, Fibonacci sequence, irrational numbers, etc..) by explaining them in the context of a story.
A while ago, I remember seeing some news specials about teen and preteen girls who get strangers to buy them gifts from their public Amazon wish-lists. There was also an article about it on Salon Candy From Strangers . I don't think Amazon is targeting underage girls to do this, but those girls have sure figured out how to exploit it. I wonder if giving users the ability to send presents to kids, if the kids' names and addresses are hidden violates a security policy. Its kind of scary.
I think the programs that help younger girls get interested in computers are great. By the time women are in high school and college it is pretty hard to reverse the stereotypes associated with the IT industry. Many girls don't realize that programming involves creativity, good organization, and even social skills in addition to logic and math. It is typically not that women think they aren't smart enough to do CS- they often just aren't interested.
I used to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club, and the young girls (ages 6-10) were just as good at using computers as the boys (word processing, graphics programs, email, web surfing, playing games). But all the girls would play 'Dress Barbie' while the boys played more violent Flash games. It's not easy to reverse gender roles.
I may be the only one to say this, but I think Macromedia is heading in the right direction with Central and Flash Remoting. Obviously Flash Intros (or "skip intro") have limited business value, and Macromedia is doing the right thing by showcasing the Rich Interface capabilities of Flash in the context of real enterprise applications. Last year my company developed a J2EE app with a Flash interface ( http://commcenter.breckcomm.com ). Flash is the perfect front-end tool for this application, because the interface is far more robust and user-friendly than HTML will ever be. It utilizes caching effectively, loads up quickly, and looks like a 'real' application- not a web page. Something our clients have been asking for is an offline version of the application. It sounds like Central would be the perfect solution. If people begin to accept Flash as a legitimate UI for enterprise applications (both web and desktop), I think they will realize its benefits over HTML, Java Applets/Swing, etc..