Why are girls so poorly represented in advanced technology classes? Why do so few women opt for careers in technology? A recent report answers those questions and more. What can you do to help the girls in your classrooms become tech-savvy women?

According to Sharon Schuster, past president of the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, there is "clear evidence that girls and women lag in interest and participation" in the use of technology. Concerns about that lag led to the formation, in 1998, of the AAUW Educational Foundation's Commission on Technology, Gender, and Teacher Education. The commission's charge was to answer the question, "How do we educate girls to become tech-savvy women?"

Following a year-long collaborative study, the commission released a report, Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age, detailing its findings and suggesting ways to create gender equity in computer education. The conclusions reached by the committee included that

• Girls find programming classes tedious, computer games redundant and violent, and computer careers uninspiring.
• Gender equity means using technology proactively, interpreting the information that technology makes available, understanding design concepts, and being a lifelong learner of technology.
• Teacher training focuses on the technical properties of hardware rather than on educational applications or innovative uses of computing for each subject area.
• Technology must be relevant for nontraditional users and learners.

The report offers a number of recommendations to help teachers spark girls' interest in technology, create social equity, and improve technology integration for all students:

• Infuse technology across disciplines and subject areas.
• Choose engaging and relevant topics and activities.
• Develop content applications that use technology for teaching specific subjects.
• Select multilevel software (with both male and female characters) that requires creative problem solving
• Incorporate technology-learning centers into the classroom.
• Encourage multiple approaches to learning.
• Include gender as a factor to consider when grouping students for technology-related activities.
• Teach "tinkering" activities that let learners experiment rather than meet specific goals.
• Encourage girls to think of themselves as designers, rather than merely users, of software and games.
• Redefine computer literacy to include skills in literacy, numeracy, cognitive science, problem solving, analysis, and logic in addition to skills with hardware and software.
• Develop assessment tools that evaluate a student's ability to use technology for learning, critical thinking, and problem solving rather than only the student's ability to use the technology.

"Girls experiences with computers in education," according to the report, "speak to problems faced by a wider range of learners -- girls and boys, men and women -- as they encounter information technology."

Related Articles from Education World

• Single-Gender Classes: Are They Better?
• Kids Build Computers -- and a Future

Article by Linda Starr
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