COMPUGIRLS: Awakening Girls’ Passion for Social Justice and Technology
Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education
University, Government
Other
Community Organization
Public
67,082 (2009)
Doctorate
Dr. Kimberly A. Scott
542 E Monroe St
Phoenix
AZ
001- (602) 496-0979
Arizona State University's Office of Educational Partnerships, in association with the Phoenix Union High School and Roosevelt Elementary school districts, has created COMPUGIRLS, a free technology program designed for minority girls. COMPUGIRLS' goal is to increase the number of women entering computer science fields by offering adolescent girls (grades 8-12) from under-resourced school districts in the Greater Phoenix area a series of culturally relevant computer science courses. Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, COMPUGIRLS provides fun summer and after-school classes where participants learn the latest technologies in digital media, games, and virtual worlds and become a voice for social justice and change in the world.
COMPUGIRLS has three objectives:
1. To use multimedia activities as a means of encouraging computational thinking;
2. To enhance girls' techno-social analytical skills using culturally relevant practices;
3. To provide girls with a dynamic, fun learning environment that nurtures the development of a proactive self-concept.
As part of the program, COMPUGIRLS loans each participant a laptop, digital camera and digital camcorder. Participants also have the chance to work with the Apple iLife suite (iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, etc), GIS, podcasting, Wikis, databases, and Scratch.
One of COMPUGIRLS's strategies is to use gender-specific activities such as encouraging girls to work collectively on topics that are gender and/or culturally relevant that they self-identify as important such as stereotypes of women of color, consequences of early motherhood, race and stereotypes, and educational equality. This type of pedagogy has proved to sufficiently empower students by imparting their knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to conduct their project and to successfully complete the program.
The COMPUGIRLS program consists of six distinct courses. Students begin with a summer session, meeting four times per week for five weeks. Each successive fall, spring and summer contains another course. Curricula are designed by Co-Principal Investigators working in tandem with mentor-teachers. The six courses are as follows:
Course I — Introduction: Introduction to social justice, media and technology
Course II — The Sims: Design a virtual world and determine the trajectory of the characters' lives
Course III — Scratch: Learn and manipulate graphical programming language to create animation, games, music and art
Course IV — Introduction to Teen Second Life: Participants create characters and begin to operate in a virtual world
Course V — Teen Second Life: Begin social justice projects to affect change in a virtual world
Course VI — Capstone of Teen Second Life: Execute proposed projects in a virtual world
Additionally, COMPUGIRLS provides hands-on technology experiences that include internships, Advanced Placement credit, conference and community presentations, and parent workshops that ultimately develop participants' techno-social analytic skills for real world problems. During summer 2008, participants had the opportunity to go on field trips, one planned to Intel, a leading maker of computer chips in the East Valley, and another to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
COMPUGIRLS is one of the few programs that combine critical thinking, social justice issues and technology. The girls have learned to use digital cameras, camcorders, several types of software and Geographic Information Systems, tools that will help them challenge injustices such as racism and gender bias. Technology is used as a means to discuss social injustice issues and to virtually represent potential solutions. Their documentaries have explored issues such as teen pregnancy, bullying and students in special education classes.
This program has proved to the girls that even if they are 14 or 15, they have the means to make global change. In the near future, this could be something as simplistic as communicating with girls in other countries about their experiences. For example, with the topic of sexual harassment, the girls could brainstorm across the ocean on how they could change the problem. In her probe of school dropouts, COMPUGIRLS’ participant Paz-Arredondo included statistics showing that low-income students are the most-at risk for leaving high school. Dropouts are vulnerable to depression and teen pregnancy. But she dismissed pregnancy as a reason for leaving school because schools have programs to help those girls.
