[N7UJJ]

Love this discussion.

I’m one of the teachers on tam 842 and partially responsible for the “girls only” team.

So, why are there not many girls in robotics and engineering? It's a tough question but the answers are all around us. Pick up a girls magazine and open it up to the science or math or building or any article that is even slightly engineering oriented. The whole magazine is how to attract boys, be Feminine, and all the stereotypical garbage that too many girls believe. Movies, TV, billboards…our whole culture defines what they are to become, and engineering is not presented attractively. Coed schools, without even noticing it, rank girls activates below the male counterpart. At our school, the female basketball team is the Lady Falcons, the boys are the Falcons. hmmm. We are in a Hispanic neighborhood and the feminine expectations are even harsher.

For years we have encouraged, cajoled and bribed girls to build, wire, drive, but most are moved aside sooner or later. "Well, the boys just know what they are doing..." What it really is, is a lack of experience. Most of the girls (and some boys) had never used power tools before.

This year we were fortunate enough to be able to go to three regionals and we will go to the Nationals. That's a lot of time out of school so we decided that we did not have to take the same students every time. That's when we hit on the all girls team. (thus, many girls did not go to the Las Vegas regional). The boys chalked it up to Gracious Professionalism.

So all this season, the females were far more involved in the building, strategy and driving practice, since they knew they had to do it all in San Diego.

And they did.

They even found some problems in our drive train that they fixed. They also discovered a programming bug that prevented our defensive robot from delivering it's max torque. As a result, our robot was in far better shape when delivered to the Las Vegas regional.

Did the boys drive better than the girls? Yes. And the boys had far more experience. but we are a far stronger team now. More importantly, we have more women going into engineering than ever before, even though they know they will have to "buck the system". (pun intended)

There is more. We post it on a [url="http://www.phxhs.k12.az.us/education/club/club.php?sectionid=3670"]blog

It was a fantastic experiment and the freshman girls took notice. I think we will have more assertive women on the team next year.

Changing the culture.

Allan