A lot of threads have been popping up about getting girls and women involved with the FIRST team, and questions of how to deal with potential recruits who say, "But I don't know anything about engineering!" I just ran across a new Do-It-Yourself show called "Switch" (that's also a blog, it looks like), that might help out a bit.
It's engineering, but it's targeted toward girls. The projects are engineering and involve soldering, wiring, and so on, but also include parts on the list like "clear nail polish". Videos are available for download (including iPod video format!
) These projects might also be good generic, non-gender-specific beginners' projects for team newbies in the fall.
Website is at
http://www.iheartswitch.com/. I'd be interested to hear if people have success with this. I plan to hand out the URL to the girls on my team to have them recruit friends.