About+the+Video+2010

Tech Savvy Girls WON First Place in the Lights, Camera, Learn Video Contest
media type="custom" key="6829467"Tech avvy Girls provides summer camps and after school activities aimed at increasing the participating of girls in high-tech activities and enrolling in high tech courses at Vermont schools, Technical Centers, and colleges. Current research shows that the ratio of girls to boys participating in these areas is 1 girl for every 10 boys. The gap is even wider in the engineering type courses and careers. This year marked the 9th consecutive year that Lake Region Union High School has hosted a Tech Savvy Girl Summer Camp in Orleans, Vermont. Each summer we provide exciting emerging technology workshops in an environment that is designed around proven strategies for engaging girls with technology. This year we introduced the girls to computer programming and robotics featuring Scratch, Lego WeDo, and Lego Mindstorm. The program is also designed to introduce middle schools girls to role models which include women with high-tech careers, high school and college girls who pursuing their interest in technology, and Tech Savvy Girls Alumni. This models provides an opportunity for girls to stay develop leadership skills and connected with each other and like minded girls beyond their middle school years. This year’s camp included 3 junior counselors who had previously attended Tech Savvy Summer Camp.

We have several indicators that TechSavvy Girls Summer Camp impacts student learning. We create a skills chart that log over 50 technical skills of our campers on Day 1 and Day 5 of the camp. Students self-assess daily on a scale 0 (Don’t know it yet) to 5 (Mastered it). Additionally, the girls create an electronic portfolio where they document their learning each day through an online journal and build a website around their new skills. Not only do these websites provide us with ample evidence of growth, but they also teach the girls the process of creating a portfolio of skills. The older girls model for the younger girls by providing stories and examples of how they have grown their own portfolio of the years and have used it to apply for jobs and college. We also administer a survey to the campers and their parents. Probably one of the most exciting testimonies of our success is the number of girls who come back each year, and come back to become volunteers. This year 75% of the campers were returning campers. 93% of the girls stated they would recommend the camp to someone else; 93% would be interested in participating in more Tech Savvy Activities and 86% expressed interest in becoming junior leaders. 84% parents surveyed rated the camp quality Excellent and 16% rated it Good. The camp also provides parent education in Internet Safety and how to support and encourage girls to participate in high tech careers and courses.

Students were involved in every step of this video Having pictures and cameras in the girls’ hands throughout the week has always been one of our success strategies – let girls use creativity tools to tell their story – then provide them with some good content (themselves learning new tech skills) to film and photograph. Using the tools to create digital stories of girls using technology reinforces the message that ‘girls can and should be’ in the picture of a tech-savvy society. This strategy helps counter the images they might encounter in real life such as computer classes that are 90% male as they walk through school; boys huddled around robotics or computer centers in their classroom; or career role models that reinforce gender stereotypes that technology is a guy’s world. During the week, the girls tell a different story – a story where they are in the picture of a high tech world. . One group of girls took pictures that captured the essence of Tech Savvy Girls and created the introduction using Animoto (an online video tool). Another group of girls learned that Scratch – the program they used to create computer games, could also be used to create animations for a digital story. These girls recorded the narratives and wrote the computer scripts to animate the characters using the same software they had used to create their computer games. This further reinforced the concept that a high tech career can involve many roles, including careers that use their creative sides. Another group of girls interviewed one of the junior counselors and each other using Flip Cameras, Digital Cameras, and Audacity – again further reinforcing the concept that girls like technology when they are making a difference and have something real and meaningful to do with it. The logo at the beginning of the movie was created by yet another group of girls using Aviary – an free online tool that they can use beyond camp. Yet another group of girls took the Flip Video footage from the week and sliced and assembled it into small video segments for the “on location” parts of the video. They got feedback from each other to get each segment to capture the spirit of that camp activity within the ‘time constraint’ given for each segment – yet another key to creativity. Although each segment was created during Tech Savvy Girls Summer Camp week, the finally stitching together of the final program submitted was not done by the girls as time ran out. As adults we put their work together into one video and uploaded it to You Tube. Unfortunately, the final product loss some quality when it was finally assembled into yet another tool – but we feel that the process of creating a digital story with real tools that were accessible in the daily lives of these girls trumped having a high quality rendition of a product produced by specialized tools that are not available to them beyond camp. This video production project provided Tech Savvy Girls with with confidence, skills, and experience with accessible tools – all strategies for closing the gender gap found in today’s high tech world.

The Techsavvy Girls Summer Camp can and has been replicated since its inception in Orleans nine years ago. The success of the program requires an enthusiastic adult or adults dedicated to learning about strategies that engage girls with technology. Interested adults work with veteran Tech Savvy Girls staff to learn successful strategies either by attending an existing summer camp or inviting experienced Tech Savvy Girls veterans to mentor them in the development of their own camp. Success requires support from the school in the form of in kind donations such as “space” in the building to hold the event, use of computer or other technology tools in the building. Most activities are built around free or open source tools so that the girls can continue to use their new skills after camp is over. Often these girls become student technology leaders in their own school or classroom. The adults involved in Tech Savvy Girls have created a strong network and share ‘specialized’ tools such as robotics with each other to keep the cost at a minimum.